Christmas Eve 2014 | dfw storytelling photography

Our Christmas Eve started out at my sister's house with the whole family. Bella helped her set the kid table, complete with name tags over the chairs. This year we did a secret santa for the kiddos which was really cute. After a yummy breakfast for dinner we had a white elephant for the adults, played Christmas pictionary, and then went to look at Christmas lights. Once my family got home, T Bone and Matty B went straight to bed and John was the only one who stayed up long enough to put out the cookies and milk for Santa and read a book before bed.

photo by Allison Jennings

photo by Allison Jennings

photo by Allison Jennings

Baking Christmas Cookies

I host my family's annual Christmas Cookie Baking day. We have 6 kiddos and 4 adults here to bake the goodies. Basically the kids help us for about 10 minutes and then play while my sisters and mom and I do the rest. John didn't even bake at all- what a big help he is! So, I had a short window of getting pictures before the kids bailed on the fun. Apparently making each other laugh through the window is more fun than baking cookies. Interesting.

Family Weekend - Storytelling Photography

We have a tradition of 'Family Weekend' the weekend right before Christmas. I really love our family weekend and I think it adds to the excitement of Christmas while letting us have a couple days for just us. This year we had a weekend filled with a visit to a cute little play place in Frisco, a trip to Six Flags (only crappy phone pictures so I am not posting those!), rides on a reindeer, walking down Main Street to see the Christmas lights and decorations, crafts, faux snow which led to a snowball fight in the kitchen, a 'snow' breakfast, and Thomas' first time to go to the movies. We all had a wonderful time spending time together as a family!