We've always known that we would probably end up living away from Utah. Back when Brandon wanted to be a commercial airline pilot he knew that his chances of being assigned to live in Salt Lake City were pretty slim. Then when he was trying to get a job with the FAA he was applying for jobs all over the country. So the fact that we would have to move away from our home state wasn't a deal breaker when Brandon decided to join the Army.
When we were first married Brandon and I would talk about how we imagined our future life together. Mostly we were dead wrong, but we did guess a few things right. One thing we were right about was that we figured when we lived out of state there would be a few Christmas Eves when we wouldn't be able to make it back home to Utah. We decided that if that was ever the case we would host our own Christmas Eve Party, and invite all of our friends to join with us in keeping our Norwegian Christmas Eve Traditions.
So Brandon and I started planning the Christmas Eve Party as soon as we decided to not go back to Utah for Christmas. This was actually really fun for us. Back in the pre-kid days we were quite the party planners. Probably the biggest party we ever planned was my sister
Emily's wedding reception. But we also did many smaller things. Our party planning skills went dormant after our kids were born. We hosted an open house when each of them were blessed as babies, but that was about it. So Brandon and I were excited to do a "real party" once again.
We worked on planning the party off and on for the past few weeks. Then we really got down to business this week. We started cleaning the house and making it the cleanest it's been since we hosted the luncheon after Veronica was blessed last year. We went shopping on Monday and bought all the food. We also finished wrapping Christmas presents so we wouldn't have to worry about that after the party.
On Monday I took the kids on a walk to gather branches to make some decorations. We ended up getting really lucking and finding some dead branches with leafs still on them. The branches already had a pretty gold hue to them. I left some of them gold and spray painted the rest with red spray paint. Then I put them into vases and tied ribbon around them. I put the vases up around the house and I was very happy with how they looked.
Lydia joined in on the decorating and cut out a paper manger scene and taped it to the base board in our living room. It was so cute and so creative that I left it up for the party.
She kept remembering things that she left out so by the time she was done with it, it wrapped around the wall and into the kitchen.
I moved one of our manger scenes to the top of the TV stand. I loved how it became a prominent reminder of the fact that we were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
I didn't really change anything up here, but I wanted to mention that Derrick has wanted to play with this train all month long. Too bad it's too fragile.
Here is another one of the spray painted center pieces on top of the piano. On Tuesday we put the last of our ornaments up on the wall and so that part of the decorating was complete.
Brandon's mom has painted each member of the family an ornament for as long as Brandon can remember. On Monday we received the package that contained this years ornaments. We each got a little bird. Mine is the red Cardinal and I am so in love with it. This might be my favorite ornament yet.
On Wednesday, which was the day of the party, our decorating really got serious. I moved all the computer stuff off of my desk and put a table cloth on the top.
A few hours before the party started I got an idea for another decoration. I ran out to the edge of the woods behind my house and cut a few branches off of some ever green trees out there. I put them in groups of three sprigs and tied them with ribbon. Then I took the "He is the Gift" pass along cards that were in this month's copy of the Ensign and attached them to a branch. I thought it turned out really well.
This table was a gift exchange table. In the invitation that we gave out we told people to bring a present that cost lest than $10.00. We even said that home made and re-gifted presents were perfect. Guests could leave a present here when they arrived and then take a different present home with them when they left. This was easier and less time consuming than playing any White Elephant games. It worked out great.
I made a little sign to welcome guests in case I was busy with something when they arrived.
This is a card holder that I made last year. At the beginning of the month it was pretty empty, but by the end of the month it was full. Thanks to those of you who took the time to send us cards, (and sorry we didn't send any out this year.)
One of our biggest concerns with this party was that we would have enough seating. I have a hard time leaving people out and so I wanted to invite pretty much EVERYONE I knew to the party. I got on Facebook and started sending private messages to my friends. I asked if they were going to be sticking around for Christmas and if they wanted to come to our party. At first I thought that more people would be out of town for Christmas, but then I started to get lots of responses from people who were staying in the area and would love to come to the party. In a ridiculously short amount of time I'd invited about 25 families to the party and 15 of them said they were interested!
Even with the realization that we were going to have a full house we still kept inviting people. We made a total of 20 invitations and gave out 19 of them. I just couldn't stand the thought of leaving anyone to spend Christmas Eve away from "family."
Brandon and I knew that all 19 families wouldn't show up. (Party planning guidelines suggest expecting about 40% of the people you invited to be able to make it.) But we still planned for a huge party anyway. After all, this was Christmas Eve. We borrowed tables and chairs and re-arranged the furniture in the living room to maximize space.
We had every chair in our house pulling duty for this party - even the little kid couches and the gilding chair.
We hoped that the weather would be nice enough to have people go outside and eat. I'd set up all our camp chairs out on the patio. But even in Texas you can't count on nice weather on Christmas Eve. So I made sure there was seating throughout the house. Even the laundry room was turned into a party area. With the round table and the window it looked like a cute little cafe spot. (I forgot to put the chairs around this table before I took the picture.)
Probably my best idea was to put tables out in the garage. This is something my dad's family has done at family parties over the years and I knew it would work well for this party.
As with the living room we had every chair working hard out here too. Brandon even found time in the middle of everything else he was doing to put a seat on this beautiful chair I'd found on the curb months ago. Getting this chair fixed up was one of his early Christmas presents for me.
We had three tables set up out in the garage. One was two card tables pushed together. One was a coffee table that folds up and is usually hanging out as a craft table in the girls' room. The last table was the most interesting table of all.
The base of it was the kids sand table. The table top was actually a foot-board for the bed that Derrick will get when he out-grows his crib. Brandon tied the foot board to the sand table. I put a table cloth on it and no one was the wiser.
The garage was a little lacking in decorations so we put up a wreath that Brandon and the kids had made. They made it over the weekend by gluing puzzle pieces to card board.
After it was painted it looked like pine boughs.
I decorated a little table out on our front porch. I put more spray painted sticks into our larges vase.
And then I put another pine-bough center piece out there. I wanted this to set the tone for the decorations inside the house.
While I worked on getting the house ready, Brandon worked on the food. He started the Rice creme on Monday night, the Sirina Kaka on Tuesday night, and the Kjottkaker (Chut Kaka) on Wednesday afternoon. Our house smelled amazing!
The invitations said that that party started at 4:00 but that we wouldn't serve dinner until 5:00. Our first family arrived around 4:10. They were the only ones for a little while, but soon more and more people arrived. We'd invited our friends from church and from our neighborhood. Most of the guests knew each other and enjoyed talking together.
We showed two movies before dinner. One was a movie that Brandon helped his brother make in High School. It's called Pokey's Christmas and it's about their friend Jake's turtle. Brandon played Santa during a part of it. It was just a silly little movie, but kids liked it. Then we showed the Piano Guys movie of the
Live Nativity that was done in Utah this year. Brandon's dad always shows a movie as a spiritual moment during the party and I wanted to continue that tradition. I picked this one because the song had been in my head all day.
The food wasn't quite ready, so we went around the room and had everyone introduce their family. I had everyone say where they were from and then tell about their favorite Christmas memory. That was fun. We had people from all over the country at our party.
Then it was time to get the food. Everyone had brought either a side dish or a dessert so there was lots of food. We had a slight bottle neck in the dining room. In hindsight, we should have set up the buffet so it ran the other way though that room, but other than that, everything was great.
Kids had been playing our backyard when the party started, but it wasn't warm enough outside that anyone wanted to eat out there. But the garage did get used. I took this picture before it was full, but every seat was taken at one point.
People also enjoyed eating in the living room.
After most people were done eating Brandon led everyone in a game. I switched out the dinner foods for the desserts. The game ended and everyone came in to get dessert. This was supposed to be a picture of Derrick getting some of the chocolate covered pretzels that I'd made - but he walked away too soon.
Dessert was a huge success. Everyone brought such yummy things. In addition to the pretzels and the Norwegian desserts we'd also made pumpkin pie and fudge.
At Brandon's family's party the Rice-creme with strawberry sauce is always a big favorite. Since we were planning for a crowd we'd made 8 cups of rice worth. We didn't count on the fact that most people wouldn't want to eat a lot of rice-creme. So we ended up with a lot left over. (That's not necessarily a bad thing.) Many people did like it thought. Here's Brandon eating the delicious goodness that is rice-creme.
I made sure that we got a picture of me too. I was having such a great time at the party.
After dessert was over we pulled the tree out from the corner and set it up in the middle of the room. Brandon told everyone that dancing around the tree was a tradition that we wanted to share with all of them. Many people joined us in holding hands and singing Christmas Carols while walking around the tree.
This was really special for me. Even though none of these people were our "real" family, they felt like family. Many of the people at the party were there for our family in some way while Brandon was in Korea. From babysitting, to mowing our lawn, to just being a friend each of these people have been important to us. I was so happy that they came to spend their Christmas Eve with us.
Charlotte, Lydia, Derrick, and some other kids ran around tree inside the circle. I've seen my nieces and nephews do that, but this was the first year that my kids did it.
I held Veronica during part of the dancing. She's a little social butterfly and she'd been having the time of her life during the party. While I held her I though about how this is probably the last year I'll hold a baby while dancing around the tree. Next year she'll probably be running around with the other kids or holding my hand.
For the most part, "dancing" around the tree is really just shuffling around the tree. But we always end the night by singing a song in Norwegian. The song is supposed to be about all the different chores that you do throughout the week to get ready to go to church on Sunday. You act out actions for washing clothes, rolling clothes, drying clothes, ironing clothes, cleaning the floor, vacuuming the floor (not really, but we couldn't remember what the final chore was), and then you join arms and go to church on Sunday. Each verse of the song ends with saying the name of the day of the week. Brandon's family knows the words and it's cool to hear them sing it in Norwegian. Well this year Brandon was the only one who knew the song. Most people joined with me in my version which goes something like, "So doe be doe ingar de bush ingar de bush ingar de bush." Brandon couldn't remember the names of the days of the week in Norwegian so we'd just say them in English. Even though it was a garbled mess and a thousand Norwegians were probably rolling over in their graves, it was really fun. People enjoyed participating in it.
We finished dancing around the tree and that meant the planned part of the party was over. It was a little before 7:00. We'd made sure to have the party end early enough that people could still go home and do their own traditions before it got to late. We also had it end at 7:00 because that's usually when Veronica melts down and has to go to bed. She was still having fun so she ended up staying awake until about 7:30. People gradually started leaving and soon it was just us and the two Elder missionaries. Elder and Sister Crockett came to pick them up and ended up coming inside and chatting for a minute. I just sat in a chair and didn't move while we talked. They kids just played around.
The Crocketts and the Elders left and it was time to put the kids to bed. I remembered at the last minute that my sister Lindsey had made Christmas pajamas for the kids. So I found those and put them on the kids. I wanted to get a picture of them all wearing their pajamas, but this is about the best one I got.
By the way, here's a little side note for you. If you want to throw a Christmas Eve party just because you think it will be fun for your kids - DON'T. Sure our kids had fun at the party, but the whole day leading up to it had been pretty tough. I think I said "NO" more on Christmas Eve than I said it all month. I had say no to playing with toys in the living room, no to eating the desserts early, no to starting a movie an hour before the party, no to making a mess in the play room, and so on. If we were trying to make our kids have an enjoyable Christmas Eve-day then we failed miserably. But this party was about continuing traditions, not about giving our kids what they wanted (that's what Christmas Day is for) and in that we succeeded.
We also succeeded in wearing our kids out. Veronica was fast asleep by 7:45 and Charlottte and Lydia put themselves to bed and were asleep by 8:00. Derrick was another story. He'd taken a 3 1/2 hour nap during the afternoon and so he was still rearing to go. Brandon and I had hoped to start putting out presents under the tree after the party. But since Derrick was awake we had no choice but to clean up.
So we spent about an hour and half moving furniture back and cleaning up. Derrick finally went to bed at 10:00 and we were able to put out presents. I mentioned to Brandon that this was the first Christmas eve since 2007 where we didn't have to travel. In fact we hadn't even left our street all day.
At the end of the night I finally got a minute to count up how many people had attended our party. Counting our family we'd had 20 adults and 25 children so 45 people total. As far as we could tell they'd all had a great time. Brandon and I congratulated ourselves on a job well done. I don't know what our plans for next Christmas will be like, but if we happen to be away from Utah again, you can bet that we'll be hosting another Christmas Eve Party.
