My very favorite things we do every year at Christmas are on Christmas Eve. We made the decision several years ago that we would protect the time on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and make that time all about our family. It has been so wonderful! Our Christmas Eve is full of special traditions that we look forward to every year.
We always go to the vesper service at church. Ben and Kate looked cute all dressed up and ready to go.
The vesper service is always very nice and simple. We sing some carols and then the pastor has all of the children come up on stage as he reads the Christmas story. It is a nice way to kick off the celebration of Jesus' birthday. 
This year Ben and Kate went down to the front all by themselves. Ben did an amazing job of keeping up with Kate. They were so cute walking down holding hands. 
After the service, we went up to the hospital to deliver the blessing baskets that we had made for the nurses on the 7th floor. We always enjoy blessing them with some goodies as they work on Christmas. 
A few years back we picked up Chinese food on the way home and somehow that tradition stuck. We get it every year and we really look forward to it! We were talking to some friends at the vesper service and they were saying they have been going out for Chinese on Christmas Eve every year for 20 years. There kids are all grown now but they still go every year. I want that to be us one day! Talking about our 20 years of China Cook!
We came home and enjoyed some super yummy Chinese food!! The kids ate it up. While we were eating we had one of the greatest teachable moments with Ben. We started talking about China and how the people in China are not free to openly worship God or celebrate Jesus' birthday. He was so very concerned and we were able to pray right there as a family for the people in China. It was such a sweet and wonderful conversation. I pray that we can really teach our kids about our wonderful blessings of being able to openly celebrate the birth of our Savior!
Then we all gathered around as Matt read the Christmas story. 
And we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and ate cake!
We set out our cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer!
Then it was off to bed for some kiddos!!! It was such a wonderful evening as we celebrated the real reason for the season!
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