A few traditions

Our little family tried a few new traditions this Christmas.

I've already blogged about our North Pole Breakfast a million times. I promise I'm done after this :)

The Mini Express was a huge hit! We'll definitely do that again. When I made the tickets, I intentionally didn't put dates on it so they could be reused.

We had our two nieces over and enjoyed a Prep'n'Landing movie night. We had breakfast for dinner. My 4 year old niece kept saying, "that's my favorite!" Pancakes for dinner? "That's my favorite!" Popcorn during a movie? "That's my favorite!" Even though I was fighting a horrible cough and Ryan purposely spilled his popcorn all over the couch, it was a great night.

We hosted Christmas Eve dinner for my family. Although we've done that before, this year I added Grinch Punch to the dessert menu. Um, Yummo! The recipe calls for lime sherbet, which is difficult to find at the grocery in the days leading up to Christmas, so I substituted Pineapple sherbet instead. I actually think it probably made it taste better.

My nephew, Hunter, enjoying some Grinch punch!

Even though we already enjoyed the great light display at the City park, my original plan was to drive around town to see lights on houses in our town. The local paper published the winner of the Light Up Town contest along with the 4 runners up. On Christmas Eve Eve, we drove around and admired the scene. The first couple houses were awesome. I can't believe people in our town do up their houses so much! Who knew?? I actually forgot to take a pic of the winner, but these are the top two runners up.

The winning house had a Santa projector in their living room window which made it look like Santa was coming up to the window and looking around outside (at you). It was very realistic looking-- I even commented to Craig that I was pretty sure it was a real person dressed up like Santa. After thinking how cool it was, my next thought was, "we should buy that and set it up outside someone's bedroom window to really scare the crap out of them one night."

My point: it was equal parts cool and creepy. See for yourself:

 

Oh, and I captured some really great pics.

Our Christmas Cards book from this years cards