It's... It's... It's... CHRISTMAS EVE

For our Christmas Eve celebration, we planned to spend the day with the Michel family.  Unfortunately, Chris began having some nausea and back pain the night before and it continued when he woke up on Christmas Eve.  So instead of getting ready and heading off to a family celebration, we headed out to Stat Care.  Grammie came to pick up Ledger so that he wouldn't have to spend time in the doctor's office (and risk getting sick!).  The doctor checked Chris for kidney stones and then decided that it's just a musculo-skeletal problem. He prescribed some muscle relaxers and pain meds and sent us on our way.  The whole thing only took about an hour, so it wasn't too bad.  By 11:30 a.m. we met the Michel and Vanderbeck families at Red Lobster for lunch.  Yum!  After lunch, we headed home for Ledger and Daddy to take a nap.  Ledger could hardly wait to get to open some presents and it took a while for him to get to sleep.  

By 3:30 we were headed back out the door to Grammie and Papa Michel's house to finally open presents. :)  Ledger was a very good helper and helped Jaime pass out all of the presents!  He got to open all of his presents first.  He was very excited about his John Deere dump truck and a Batman race car set.  Every time he opened a present, he would start saying: "It's.... it's.... it's.... it's...." until it was finally open and he could declare: "It's a DUMP TRUCK!"  It was pretty adorable.  After all of his presents were done, he helped unwrapped presents for everyone else in the family too.

After all of the presents were through, we had our annual scavenger (treasure) hunt through the house.  Ledger led the way.  Of course.  And then we just got to spend time together eating sandwiches and helping Ledger play with his toys.  By 7, it was time for us to head back home and get ready for bed while the Michels and Vanderbecks had to get ready for church.  

When we got home, we said goodbye to DeeDee elf.  It's his last day of 2011 as our scout elf, but we know we'll see him again next year.  I wonder if DeeDee elf knows that next year he'll have TWO kids to report to Santa about! :)

Dee Dee elf thought he could hide amongst all of our Sweedish Tomtees.

 When we put Ledger to bed, we read "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  Last year, we had all of Ledger's grandparents along with great-Grammie and Nanny read and record a page of the book.  Ledger really enjoyed listening to all of his grandparents read him a story.  It was especially touching to hear Nanny's voice read the last page since she is no longer with us this Christmas.

"Merry Christmas to all.  And to all a Good Night"