Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas Eve brought one of our favorite family traditions, fondue with the Scrivners. This year we hosted it at our house and it was so much fun and so good!! I told everyone it was our reward for hiking through so many feet of snow, after all we burned at least a billion calories.

After we said goodbye to our favorite friends we exchanged our pajamas. 

It was so much fun to see what everyone picked out for each other, this will definitely be a new tradition, but we learned some of us require more money than others, we will do better next year. When we were finished shopping I knew Samantha didn't have enough because she told me she could only buy pants so I gave her more money to buy a shirt. I had Rob so I could pay for the extra, but poor Hunter just did his best with what he had. He had found so many cute things for Samantha but it didn't fit in his $20 budget, and since we were keeping it a secret he didn't say anything. We knew Samantha was disappointed, but she was so very sweet to her brother. Thank you Christmas spirit!!

I had Rob, Rob had Hannah, Hannah had Hunter, Hunter had Samantha, and Samantha had me.

Hannah was so excited about the pajamas she picked out for her brother. She told me immediately who she had because she just couldn't keep it in and had a very hard time not letting everyone else know who she had.

We watched the animated version of the Grinch and then talked about what the true meaning of Christmas is before sending the kids to a sleepless night of sleep.

Rob and I turned on ABC Family and watched the end of Christmas Vacation and the majority of Elf while I set out all the presents, stuffed stockings, and he put together the kids big presents.

We made it to bed before midnight to get as much sleep as we could before the kids were up bright and early.

Christmas Eve

We had a big plan for Christmas Eve, we would hike into the Hot Pots early in the morning, and then later that night we would head over to our friends house for Christmas Eve Fondue.  I was very excited for this plan until we realized it was going to be cold.  When we left our house that morning  at 8:30 it was 12 degrees outside, I began to wonder if we were crazy.  When we got to the trail head our cars told us it was zero degrees outside, at this point I knew we were crazy.

Instead of turning back we bundled everyone up and started on our 2 1/2 mile hike in.  The kids were troopers and hiked in despite how cold it was, I won't say there wasn't any whining, but for the situation they did awesome.  And when we did finally make it my kids couldn't strip down fast enough and jump in.

After everyone got the fill of swimming (aka the mommies were cold and ready to go back) we tried to hurry and dry off, and put clothes back on as fast as possible.  We then hiked the 2 1/2 miles back out.  After all the hiking the kids were so happy to see our cars again, and we were happy to see the temperature had gone up 20 degrees.

After a much needed nap we headed to Dan and Crystal's for fondue, I had never had real fondue so I was excited, we also had not eaten since breakfast so we were starving.  They had the best spread, the cheese was delicious (I could have eaten nothing but bread and cheese and been happy), the meat was amazing, and the chocolate fountain was a huge hit.

We all left with huge smiles and very full bellies!! (Thanks again Dan and Crystal for inviting us!!)

We returned home and we all got to open our Christmas eve pajamas (Rob and I got slippers this year).

After the kids were showered and ready for bed we all snuggled on the couch to watch The Grinch cartoon before we ushered the sidekicks off to bed.

Hannah decided to leave Santa some chocolate dipped fruit she had made and he must have liked it because our tree looked pretty full the next morning.