{Christmas Eve} Traditions at home

We decided to celebrate Christmas at our own home this year. (This became an even better idea when we found out the moving company would show up to our house Dec. 27th to start boxing up our things.) We had so much fun... unfortunately, I had a few things on my mind and my to-do list, so I didn't take a lot of pictures. However, we did get Christmas morning on video.
My "growing up family" has a tradition of opening up some specific gifts on Christmas Eve. This included the gifts from Grandparents. And since there were so many of us kids, we always drew names (it gets a little expensive to buy for everyone). Then, we would do our gift exchange Christmas Eve. Now the drawing pool consists of anyone not married... including my parents' kids and grandkids. Jackson got his gift from Uncle Josh and he LOVED it! (Nerf gun... see below). Parker and I have decided to continue this tradition as well as some others... and to start some of our own. In his "growing up family", they would load up in the car Christmas Eve to look at Christmas lights... when they returned they would always find a small token gift on the porch that had been left by Santa, often with a personal note. We did this too and Jackson especially got a huge kick out of it! He was talking in a shrill voice and jumping up and down... just the thought of Santa visiting our house!
Kate's baby doll (who sucks on her own bottle, giggles and cries) is from Uncle Christian... as you can see, she is totally in the "baby" stage and LOVED her gift too.
I practically had to pry it out of her hands to get the doll out of the box.
There you go... there's Jackson with his big, excited "I just dot my beary own shootin' dun! This is totally awesome!!" (his own words)
[Sorry these are a little out of order... I'm too tired to fix them]
[I cooked my first prime rib roast for dinner tonight and it was amazing... there really aren't words to describe how delicious it was. Typically, we both want to have Christmas dinner on Christmas day. However, this year we decided to get together Christmas evening with 2 of our great friends/families in our Ward for Christmas dinner. There was so much food and we had a blast together. Just a few days later 2 of the 3 of us would be moving, so it was important to us to spend this time together, especially since none of our extended families are close by.]
Can you tell we had red koolaid with dinner? Both of our kids have major red "mustaches".

Jackson opening his gifts from my Grandma Schwitters
Grandpa Pugmire and Tony(a) gave each of us married kids/families the Gospel Art Kit/Booklet and money to spend on things we may need or want for our family.
Jackson & Daddy told the story of Baby Jesus' birth and life using the pictures. (We are going to use the Christmas money toward Jackson's new bunk bed and bedding after we get settled in Eugene.)

We also read the Christmas story out of the Bible and sang some Christmas songs before we went to bed. Oh, and of course we left cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.