Christmas Eve

Earlier this week I decided we would try something different for Christmas Eve.  2020 has been a really different year so why not just roll with it.  I decided it would be fun to do a "Bethlehem dinner".  We have attended one or two sponsored by our ward but never done one on our own.  Sunday we finished the last episode of "The Chosen" and when I watched the Christmas episode of "Don't Miss This" they talked a lot about shepherds so I think I was thinking about that time period more than I normally am. Watching "The Chosen" has been the best Sunday family activity for us the last 8 weeks.  It has really brought the stories and people in them alive.  Jared and Lydia have loved the episodes so much. Its been so great leading up to Christmas.  On "Don't Miss This" they had a guest on and she made a citrus olive oil cake so I thought I would make that and then it just evolved into a whole dinner.  We were talking to some friends about the idea of a "Bethlehem dinner" and one of them joked that a more accurate description would be a "Bethlehem snack" based on the food normally eaten.  Its a valid point.  To make it more filling we decided to order kebabs from a local restaurant.  It's more likely people then would have eaten fish but we went with what we could easily source and what actually sounded good to us. We had cheese and grapes, flat bread and crackers, grilled vegetables for Mark, the meat skewers and sparkling grape juice.  It turned out delicious.  

My co worker Jen actually got me a set of cake platters for Christmas this year and I was so happy to use them tonight. We set up a table on the floor and lit a bunch of candles.  Even if the food is bad candles make everything better.  As we ate we had soft Jewish music in the background and Jared and Lydia even dressed up for the dinner.  Jared came as a shepherd and Lydia was a sheep.  She described herself as the favorite sheep who got to eat all her meals with her shepherd and said it wasn't weird at all that she was likely eating one of her siblings (the lamb kebabs), that girl. After eating we had a simple lesson/devotional on the names of Christ.  A sweet sister in the ward made us a lovely set of ornaments from the names of Christ.  We passed the basket around and each read a name and took a moment to think about what the name told us about Jesus and what he could do for us. It was so nice.  We went downstairs and watched the short Christmas episode of "The Chosen" and then came up to have our cake.  Mark was skeptical that it would taste good but it was delicious.  I even made homemade ricotta for it which was actually really simple.  It was a perfect evening at home celebrating the birth of our Savior.

We started the day with Christmas tree waffles and cleaning out closets.  One of the Light the World activities we selected was to donate to a second hand shop so we did that today.  It felt great to clean out some things.  We were pretty successful with Light the World 2020.  Our service happened in waves.  We would do a full weeks worth and then skip every night the next week and then be super active the next week.  My favorite was singing Christmas carols to someone via video chat.  That is something we can plan to do every Christmas and even all year we can sing songs to people, like singing on Sundays or something like that.  It was super rainy all day so we stopped by the church for some physical activity.  Jared and Mark played poison and Jared and Lydia both drove their new remote control cars they found and bought for themselves at Costco yesterday.  Mark and I wrote out the clues for tomorrows scavenger hunt while Jared and Lydia played in the basement.  Mark also spent some time reading old Christmas blog posts with Jared and Lydia which made me really happy.  I am not sure what I want to do with this blog but it sure was nice to have those memories around to go through today. They also exchanged their sibling gifts and both were very happy with the gifts chosen and finally getting to open a present. Mark and I filled stockings after Jared and Lydia went to bed.  It should be a fun day tomorrow. 

Christmas Tree waffles had actually completely slipped my mind, as I was talking about making waffles for breakfast last night I remembered that we normally make them.  It was perfect for this morning.