Merry Chinese Christmas Eve!

Tonight was our 9th annual Chinese Christmas Eve....this year it was complete with our little Chinese daughter!! Who would have guessed, nine years ago, what God had in store for us. It seems like coincidence or chance, but it was all a part of God's plan!

The year Noah was one, I had planned a great Christmas Eve dinner, just for Steve, baby and I. Well, Noah had this weird habit of sticking his fingers down his throat when his thoat hurt. Noah happened to be sick with an ear infection (one of many) and I am sure you can just about imagine what happened with all of that great Christmas dinner....it ended up coming back up all over his highchair tray....not a real appitizing thing. I ended up in tears and it was at that moment that we decided the next year for Christmas Eve we would order out, just to make things easier and less stressful.

So, every year since then, I spend Christmas Eve afternoon getting our table all "fancied up" with our wedding china and crystal, cloth napkins and pretty table decorations. We then go to our Christmas Eve church service and on the way home we pick up Chinese food from Hunan 1, our favorite Chinese take out place. Every year is a bit different, depending on who can join us, but we are always open to everyone and anyone from the family. The more the merrier!

This year we were joined by my mom and my step-dad, Rich. Steve, Emma and Caleb were all sick with colds, so they didn't join us for church. They all had such bad coughs, I didn't want them to be coughing on the people around us. It probably was good they didn't come, as Caleb fell asleep in the chair and ended up taking a pretty good nap while we were gone....and that is a sheer miracle in itself. The only way Caleb would EVER nap is if he didn't feel good.

My parents stayed for dinner and then we let the kids open their presents from us while they were here. We typically do our gifts on Christmas morning, but we need to head to School Hill for the Fidlin Family Christmas tomorrow morning.

We bought Noah the Pixar mini movie DVD, the Toby Mac Portable Sounds CD, a watch and Anime Studio, which is a comic/cartoon making computer program. Caleb got Lincoln Logs, a book about the human body and a skateboard/bike ramp. Emma got the Sonya Lee doll, Magneatos and a puzzle.