CHRISTMAS 2012

I hope that everyone had happy holidays!!

I wanted to share a few photos from our Christmas at my parents' house in New Jersey. When I'm home for Christmas it seems like nothing has changed at all. It still feels a little like childhood, except that now I have my wonderful husband by my side. It's warm, cozy, and full of movies, games, and hot chocolate. Basically, Christmas is my "happy place". It's what every other special day aspires to.

Now, I would never really describe my taste or style as "traditional", unless we're talking about Christmas. Christmas I don't like to mess around with or get creative. There's one way I want it to look, and that's like this. (I'm only talking about for me. You can have a pink glitter themed Christmas if you want, and I think that's fun! Go you!)... But here, every ornament has meaning and every stocking was hand-made and it's full of more traditions than I can even count. From the serious (reading from the Bible on Christmas Eve) to the silly (there's a little toy Christmas mouse that I think came in a Happy Meal that balances on top of the Santa Claus tree-topper's head - it's the last thing to go on the tree and I get to put him there because I started it 20 years ago)....

This next photo is my dad reading The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. It's another Christmas Eve tradition. The Grinch is special because we have a photo of Dad reading this book, usually in front of a fire, with my sister and I on either side, every year for the past 26 years or so... I'd like to try and put together some kind of photo album that we can keep adding to every year. It'll be so neat to see us grow over the years (except for my dad, who doesn't age) and start adding kids of our own into the mix.

This is Molly. But, my sister and I call her "Doodle".

Next year, we will start celebrating Christmas out here in California, so I was extra happy that it was a white Christmas.

I love this next photo because it's me with my 4 most favorite people in the whole world. Since this is a post about Christmas, I'm not going to worry about sounding too sentimental... I want to take a minute just to be grateful. Just to acknowledge that I know I'm very blessed. I am so thankful for my family. I love my job, and my friends, and my home, but nothing compares to how I feel about everyone in this photograph. I'm so lucky to have such fantastic parents who have taught me what a happy, healthy marriage looks like and what it feels like to love and be loved unconditionally. They're what I will aspire to be as a parent someday and I'm grateful that I have their example to follow. My sister is intelligent, beautiful, funny, and one of the best story tellers I've ever met. Everything is more fun when she's involved and making her laugh really hard is the absolute best. Rodney's the newest addition to our family, and as my mom puts it "he just fits in so perfectly". He's thoughtful and caring and one of the hardest working people I've ever met. We're best friends and really, truly, do fall more in love with each other every day. I'm such a better person for knowing him and I really don't know what I'd do without him. :)

I don't know how to end this post, sooooooo.... Merry Christmas?

xo