Today was what I envision as the quintessential Christmas Eve. It began very low key - I spent a bit of the morning helping the girls wrap their gifts for the family, and spent the other time getting ready to have my brother and his family as our guests for Christmas. About mid-afternoon I stopped my preparations of the house to prepare myself, Ava, and Jocelyn for Christmas Eve Mass. After a lot of internal struggle, I had decided to leave Molly at home with Ben for Christmas Eve Mass - it is such a long service, it can be hard for well-behaved children to sit through, much less an antagonistic three-year-old. In the end I was SO glad to have made this decision. Ava and Jocie were wonderfully behaved, and I was able to enjoy Mass for the first time in a very long while. We came home, and shortly afterward Kevin, his wife Marissa, and their boys Josiah and Zeke arrived. We had tamales for dinner and the kids played before heading off to bed.
Today reminded me so much of when we prepared for one of our own children to be born. There was a calmness in the mundane tasks we performed - laundry, cooking, picking up - but with an underlying excitement for what was to come soon. Feeling this connection of preparing for my children to be born with awaiting the birth of Jesus made this year's holiday all the more personal and special for me. Today was a wonderful way to truly kick off what I'm sure will be a fun and blessed Christmas season.
Proud to have had these lovely ladies accompany me to Mass
... and as much as I adore her, I'm pretty glad I didn't attempt to take this turkey with us ;)
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