santa is coming to town

2:41 PM

what a marathon day christmas eve was. it all started at 9am at my parent's house. we started this tradition last year becuase although lisa & i want to stay home with our own little families on christmas morning...we weren't ready to give up my mom's big christmas breakfast. so we just moved it up a day. this year brendy and ryan got to spend the night at ne ne & dow's thursday night. they were beyond excited. they decorated a gingerbread house, made popcorn, left cookies for santa, got to sleep in the same bed and stayed up way, way too late. (this was very evident the next morning!) they had a fabulous time and were so excited when they woke up and found snow on the ground! (ryan asked me if it was snowing at our house too.) by the time we all got there they were itching to dive into the presents...

santa left these little beauties..one for the sweeney's and one for us!

the loot

let the chaos begin...

lilly discovers the monkey bread and proceeds to eat half the plate

mj found my old ua basetball warm up jacket in the basement...dan thought it looked better on him. isn't he funny?

after a few major meltdowns from the big kids...the little girls were ready for some breakfast.

after breakfast we headed home for naps. ry was so tired from her big night out she fell asleep at 12:30. this worked out nicely for us since we had to be at pillar at 3:30 (latest) for 4:00 mass. gotta love christmas eve mass. we got there around 3:40 and couldn't even make it past the lobby. we made it until after they brought up the gifts and threw in the towel. i hated leaving but with dan and i switching off playing in the basement gym with the girls we decided God would much rather us spend the time with our families than at "mass." so we headed over to our next event of the night. dinner with the sciales side.

this is always an entertaining evening. we have way too much fun! we altered it a little this year by eliminating a sit down dinner. being a mom to two of the 6 (almost 7!!) littles ones we have running around now i was very excited about this. it's hard to wrangle the kids to sit which means the moms don't sit...this year proved to be perfect! we still had fabulous food...the traditional veil spedini's (which were awesome), artichokes, crab cakes, lots and lots of appetizers...we just ate and ate and ate. and then it was time for more presents!

lil and gracie playing us some christmas tunes

the artichoke hoarders...

they were nice enough to share with ry & lil...

making funny faces for mommy

time to dig into those presents...

another fabulous christmas eve in the books. the girls were pooped. after a little goodbye ceremony to sarah the elf, who was going to be leaving with santa that night, it was off to bed. i leave you with our oldest rocking her faux fur and sparkly shoes...

merry christmas to all!