Christmas Eve

A few years ago our good friends the Jensen's invited us along on their annual Christmas Eve Caroling and it is now our annual tradition and we love it! We look forward to it every year. One of the first houses we go to is grandma Siebach. She is a fabulous wonderful woman. The kids love it because we carol inside and she always has treats and candy out for the kids to eat.

Chris really is having fun...I think.

Baby it's cold outside

This year our stake, along with the neighboring stake, raised money for Habitat for Humanity to build a house here in Rochester. The family had moved in just a few weeks before so we decided to go sing to them.

look how happy she was to see all 50 of us

our last house....by this time we are frozen to the core and dreaming of the hot apple cider and Chicken Chili waiting for us at the Jensen's house.

we get time to relax and visit with some of our favorite people

eat food with our friends

sit and talk as teenagers

really it's all about spending the evening with friends

Best friends who have become our family

people who make it so much easier to live so far away at Christmas time

We are all one big family

My favorite part of the night is when we all gather together in front of a big fire

waiting for a story

Cary read The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. Suzy read the story of Jesus Christ's birth in Luke 2.

After the story there is a bunch of things going on. Mostly the kids run around and the parents try to gather them so we can say good bye.
Here are a few of our favorite missionaries. We love them.

There is singing at the piano

reading in the library

and dancing in the living room. There is no other place I would like to be on Christmas Eve than with this group of people. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends who, like I said, really are our family. I don't know what we would do without them.