Chrismas Eve

Christmas Eve was busy, busy busy. We went hiking in the morning and then drove up into Smokey Mtn. National Park and saw some gorgeous views. (A different post on that one).

When we got home Nina gave the boys these awesome capes. They are reversible - Superman on one side and Batman on the other. They were so excited...as you can see. They enjoyed watching themselves in the mirror.





Since we wanted to have a tree at the cabin we brought a few ornaments. These were some special ornaments we made one of the last times we were all together for Christmas. It was the first Christmas after we moved to Virginia in 2002.

The kids had fun decorating the tree. I love Orin's long hair but I hate how it makes it hard to get cute pictures of his face sometimes.

We let the kids open a couple of gifts on Christmas Eve. Our amazing sending church has a special program for all of the MKs. They do an Angle Tree type program and a family in the church picks an MK to send a few Christmas gifts to. It is truly a blessing. The families who picked our kids this year were incredibly generous. We wanted these gifts to be special to the kids so we had them open them on Christmas Eve to keep them separate from their other gifts.

Orin was very excited about one of his gifts.

I love this sequence of pictures. Caiah got very into the actual tearing of the paper.

Do you think he likes it?

Checking it out...

"Mommy, can you help me open it?"

Playing with the new toy.

And finally, enjoying this awesome chocolate mousse pie. Seriously, if you like that kind of thing, you have to try out the recipe!