Christmas Eve Traditions?

Christmas Eve growing up was a great day.  Such anticipation, such excitement.  As an adult there's still anticipation and excitement, combined with that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach because you know that it's not all done.  You know that you'll probably be up until 3 AM working on cooking, cleaning, decorating, wrapping, or what have you (knitting??).  And you know that at about 7 AM a short person will wake you from your sound slumber with a poke in the nose and an excited "Hey Mommy, are you awake yet?!?!?"

It's worth it when the kids see the wrapped gifts, music already playing in the background, cookies for breakfast ready to go.  Sitting down to a breakfast you look forward to all year.  Opening presents you carefully wrapped just a few hours before and making a wretched mess of everything but the squeals of delight are just fantastic.

When I was a kid, every Christmas Eve was capped off with going to a big old Christmas party.  Over the years, the party stopped and my family started attending a Christmas Eve church service and going out to dinner.  It was such a great way to spend the evening - our family eating and laughing and having good times.

Now that I have my own family, we are working on our own traditions.  I think this year we will have home-made pizza dinner and a family Christmas movie.   A Christmas Story?  The Grinch?  Then once the kids are in bed, we'll watch It's a Wonderful Life, I'll make cloud cookies, and then Santa will do his thing.

I can't wait for tomorrow!  Merry Christmas!