Christmas Eve continued...

Christmas Eve service is one of my favorite church services of the year, second only to Easter Sunday. And I love that both Matt's family and my family are at the same church, so we all end up sitting as one big group and I love it! I can't get through the part of the service where we all hold a candle, the lights are turned off and everyone raises their candles up above their heads and the light just fills the room--I get emotional every year (which says a lot as I've been accused of being cold and heartless on several different occasions:) 

Auntie Cam sang at the services on Christmas Eve, so the kids were very excited to be able to get up on stage and see everything from a different perspective. (I should clarify, Sadie was very excited and Blake wanted to check it all out but Wyatt didn't want to get anywhere near the stage.)

Sorensen clan

And our little tribe

After church, we headed over to Matt's parent's house for some hors d'oeuvres and drinks. And Matt's mom is well-known for keeping all their childhood toys, which my kids absolutely love playing with! Remember Lite Bright?! She had two of them (you can see one in the foreground of this picture with one of those templates on it)

Unplanned matching outfits--this happens with these two more often than they'd like to admit!

Once the kids went to bed, we kept up the new tradition from last year of playing dictionary, men vs. women. And since we had a bit more time to plan, we had great door prizes this year. I didn't get a picture of all of them, but the lovely 'granny panties' from last year made a reappearance along with a few new ones...

..I had to take this picture because Ty ended up getting two pairs of these lovely Christmas socks, so I took a picture of him putting the second pair on over the first…poor guy was really trying to get one of the gift cards (remember being a poor college student?), which just made it that much funnier when he kept getting socks...

..and I wasn't able to get a picture of my father-in-law from the front in this gift, but I think the picture from the back may be even funnier!!