The Crowl Family Adventures: Christmas Eve & Christmas 2013

I'm slightly obsessed with traditions when it comes to the holidays. The more fun things we can pack into one night, the merrier. Fortunately, the people we're around during the holidays enjoy doing lots of things as well!

I wanted to put out some luminaries this year. In both of my childhood neighborhoods, everyone set up luminaries. It was always so magical.. except when my sister caught her hair on fire one year. I remember my brother and I would go out super early on Christmas morning to see if any of the bags were still lit. Anyway, I wanted to start the tradition up this year.. even if we were the only house in the neighborhood to participate.

I love to find different holiday themed food ideas. This year I made a veggie Christmas tree, Grinch grapes, reindeer cheese slices, and a wreath made out of pigs in a blanket.

After dinner we made our favorite sugar cookies. Yum! Ben asked why we only make these once a year. That is a very good question.

I love the chaos when so much family is around.

It got awfully quiet when I served up Polar Express hot chocolate.

After everyone was hyped up on sugar, we ventured out for some caroling. I was a little melancholy going into it because so many of our close neighbors moved away this year. It still ended up being a lot of fun.

Trying to get the cousins to look at the camera is pretty much impossible, but we did it!

We couldn't believe that we had to wait an HOUR for Colter to wake up on Christmas morning. This little lady was up and rearing to go by 6.

Colter definitely got the idea of opening presents this year. I'm all about taking things slow.. opening one gift at a time, playing with it before moving on to the next one, etc. He was very antsy to move on to the next present!