Christmas Eve

Sauteing scallions for beef tenderloin...

The chefs!

Cookies for Santa are ready!  Oh, and don't forget the apple for Rudolph!

Santa apparently thought we were very good this year!

A White Christmas!

Christmas Eve was my favorite part of Christmas this year.  Although I didn't get much sleep the night before (Jeremy has a LOUD snore that is wearing me out!), after a quick nap I was ready to go.  We hosted Mom, Dad, Rusty, and Memaw for an early dinner of beef tenderloin, new potatoes, and caesar salad.  This was my first venture in making a beef tenderloin.  You can tell I am a newbie because when Jeremy called me from the grocery store to say that the beef costs $85.00, I am almost flipped!  Don't worry - thanks to a friend of mine, we found beef tenderloin for $6.99/lb. rather than $20.00/lb., so I was still able to make it without emptying my bank account.  Olivia was so excited to help me - she was instrumental in sauteing the scallions, as you can tell from the picture!  Memaw brought a special gift for the girls - the book a Night Before Christmas, narrated by Memaw herself.  I loved it so much I almost cried.  

After a wonderful dinner, we loaded up in the car for children's Mass at the Newman Center.  Trying to get dinner on the table and 2 kids out the door for Mass by 5 is INCREDIBLY difficult I have discovered - particularly since they are hyped up on Christmas and don't particularly want to wear their church outfits.  But I managed with about a bottle of wine - I couldn't waste where my beef tenderloin recipe only called for 1/2 a cup!  The Mass was beautiful, although I doubt Olivia or Lilly saw much of it.  

Afterwards, we headed home to bake cookies for Santa and set out an apple for Rudolph.  Olivia was so funny this year.  She is TERRIFIED of Santa.  So the prospect of him coming in our house was creating quite a bit of anxiety.  I finally had to tell her that I wouldn't let Santa come in the house, but that I would meet him in the driveway with his cookies, milk, and the apple for Rudolph and pick up her presents.  Whew!  She is a little high maintenance!  After watching Santa on the Santa Tracker on my iphone (love that app!) and finding out that Santa was no longer lost in China (thank goodness!), we put the girls to bed.  Jeremy and I have a ritual every Christmas Eve that I make a brie with brown sugar and pecans, Jeremy opens a bottle of wine, and we enjoy brie and wine while watching one of our favorite feel-good movies - Love Actually.  I love that movie - it never gets old!  After the movie we headed to bed but before we went upstairs, we checked out to see if Santa had arrived (he had and was VERY generous!) and then looked out the window to see if the forecasters were correct about a white Christmas...and they were!  I cannot remember a white Christmas ever, so I was so excited.  It was beautiful!  Christmas Eve was a fantastic day!