Christmas Eve 2011

For our Christmas eve post-church meal, we were inspired by my family's tradition of having a traditional German meal--sausages, sauerkraut, potato salad, and smokies. We made some (vegan) modifications, and ours ended up being a mediterranean plate (hummus, olives, pita, baby carrots)--partly inspired by the fact that we always stop at Judy's Oasis in the West Side Market whenever we visit Cleveland and stock up on awesome delicious Middle Eastern goodness--along with some Tofurkey brand Italian sausage (not German, but it's what we had on hand) and smokies. If it seems random, that's because it kind of is. We didn't have much time to plan our grocery shopping after arriving home from Ohio and all we managed to put on our list were the items we needed to cook Christmas dinner, forgetting about Christmas Eve dinner. Next year I'll be more on top of things, I hope!

After dinner, we got ready for our family Christmas exchange. Here are the kids posing in front of the Christmas tree with the family exchange gifts underneath--my family draws names among all the siblings and spouses and then we do a separate drawing among the cousins so everyone ends up with one gift to open. This year none of us siblings were in the same place so we all shipped our gifts and took pictures of the gift opening to share.

Here's RUS opening his exchange gift from his cousin L--who, if you'll recall, shares his birthday. I just love that little detail. Anyway, he received an AWESOME box full of duplo blocks. Jackpot. We pull out the duplos daily, so this set is going to get a LOT of use.

The first gift R opened was a hat and mitten set from Great-Grammy and Great Aunt L. She wore the hat for the rest of the gift exchange and only took it off when we put pajamas on for bed.

RUS also got a hat (an adorable monkey one!) and both kids got the sweetest Nancy Tillman books that are all about being loved along with a stuffed animal from each book. Both the books and the stuffed animals were huge hits.

Here's J holding up our custom ornament from A & M. We love it and the kids were so tickled to see themselves on an ornament. 

 I'm holding up my exchange gift from M: I love the pajamas, and wore them Christmas Eve, most of Christmas Day (up until we had our big dinner) and all of Boxing Day, a day in which I did not once change into clothes.

 J got an absolutely amazing-looking vegan cookbook from a NY-based vegan restaurant. Everything looks scrumptious, but the recipe he has been eyeing? Doughnuts. He can't wait to make them.

Here's RUS opening his gift from Little Frog: a John Deere backhoe loader. It's AWESOME. He loves this thing!! I forgot to get a picture of R opening her gift, but she got a pair of really cool stained glass coloring books--designs that you can color that end up looking like stained glass. They will be fun to hang on our windows! and a Pinkalicious! Scrabble Junior game that will be a lot of fun to play. We had the regular Scrabble Junior game when I was growing up and I remember playing it a lot!

R also got bracelets to bedazzle from her cousin T. Again, totally awesome. She spent half an hour bedazzling one of the bracelets yesterday and loves it.

Whew! After all that gift opening we had to set up our cookie plate for Santa, complete with carrot for the reindeer.