Christmas Favorites

I am slowly getting more excited about Christmas.  This year I have tried to get the kids more involved and I think that is helping to raise the excitement a bit.

Tonight I am having over a few good friends and their kids for a "Christmas Pajama, Cookies and Craft" night.  One of the blogs I follow Christmas pajama and ornament exchange a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was such a cute idea.  I'm hoping that it will become a yearly tradition.  Side note:  I looked and looked for that post.  If it is you that I am talking about, please make a comment below and I will link you to this post!

Every Thanksgiving after we have dessert, Gaga (the Daddy) reads Elf on the Shelf to the kids.  They get so excited and they know that it means the start of the Christmas season.

The that crazy Elf, Chucky, appears everyday until Christmas Eve keeping a watchful eye over the kids.

Our Christmas lasts for an entire week.  We start off at my parents' house on the Sunday before Christmas Day.  We have appetizers, open presents and just hang out together.  It is a lot of fun because there are five grandchildren.

I can't believe how much they have grown since this picture last year.

On Christmas Eve we go to church (we MUST listen to Christmas music on the way there) and then we go to Scott's sister's house.  We all take individual family pics and then one huge pic of everyone.  We eat and open presents and then head home to wait for Santa.

Santa comes after the kids are in bed.  We have a lot of fun putting everything together and listening to Christmas music.  Then, we try to get a few hours of sleep.

After opening presents on Christmas morning, we all get ready and go eat at the Ameristar Casino buffet.  We started this tradition about 4 years ago and I Love It!  The last thing that I want to do on Christmas is to cook so we stuff ourselves and then come home, change back into our Christmas pj's and play with the new toys, watch movies, watch football and just relax.  It is perfect!

I would love to hear about some of your Christmas favorites and so would a lot of other people.  Click on this link and share your traditions!