I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Eve

Well it was a perfect Christmas Eve. A ton of fun, snow everywhere and lot and lots of family time. What could be better. I set out to get everything done on the 23rd so that I could enjoy Christmas Eve and that included shopping, super cleaning, frying a ton of milanesas and staying up until 3 AM to get everything done. There were a lot of milanesas to fry (Argentine country fried stake. My mom makes them every year for Christmas but she needed help frying some this year since we were making so many). Here's a picture of them all breaded up ready to be fried.

 I burned myself something fierce when one of them slipped and splashed oil everywhere. Of course I hadn't put the clean dishes away before I stared frying so when the oil splashed it got everything. Once I was finally done frying I had this lovely mountain of dishes waiting for me

 It was worth it though. The next day all I had to do was bathe the kids, shower myself and we were ready to go the the annual Swenson Christmas Eve party. This year it was at Uncle Joe's and Aunt Jolene's house (which is just about the most stunning house ever). It's in midway and as hard as I tried, I still got super sick on the ride up (but surprisingly not on the ride down). Once I got my stomach under control (and said hi to everyone), I got to turn my attention on the awesome food (with some pictures, of course)

Seriously the food was so good!

After dinner was all cleaned up we got all together for a family picture. It's the entire family (minus Nathan, of course). As I was the photographer I have to say I'm pretty proud of the picture. The self timer is a wonderful thing

A couple of years ago the Minute-to-win-it tradition was stared (in fact, it was the first year I went to the party) and it's quickly turned into a favorite. Because everyone was here we turned it into Gourleys vs Swensons vs Keeles. The Swensons won this year but it's cool. Redemption will be coming two years from now

Obviously I couldn't leave this picture off the post, even if it is a little blurry

This was the greatest part of the games. It clinched the win for the Swesons but who cares. How great is this!

 I actually had to feed Katelyn during the Nativity so I left Adam in charge of pictures

 This year, we had an unwrap-it game for the kids. For those of you who are not familiar... everyone takes turns rolling dice. If you roll doubles you get to start unwrapping a present. You can keep unwrapping until someone else rolls doubles and then it's there turn. The kids present had candy in different layers. They weren't really into it until that first layer of candy came out, then it turned into a battle. The funniest thing was as soon as the last layer was unwrapped and the rest of the candy came out, everyone who hadn't won something stared crying. Don't worry, there was extra candy for everyone

No one cried at the adult's unwrap-it game; which is saying a lot since there was a $25 Cheesecake Factory gift card on the line (way better than candy if you ask me)

 We ended the night with everyone's favorite... the White Elephant! Spencer and I were pretty proud of the presents we brought this year as they both got stolen. I was all set to steal a selfie stick but Katelyn loved the present I had unwrapped (a stuffed taco that sings and dances). I couldn't take it away from her (besides she had already sucked on it a ton)

Katelyn fell asleep as soon as we got in the car to go but the Little Guy was awake the entire ride through the canyon. We had a great time singing Christmas songs all the way home and got super lucky that the snow didn't start until we were our of the canyon and back in Provo.

Thanks to everyone that made Christmas Eve so special for our family!