Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. Actually, I believe what I enjoy is the whole season leading up to Christmas. From Thanksgiving until Christmas I get to celebrate 2 holidays and a birthday. In my opinion, it is also the most beautiful time of year. Frigid winter mornings are mixed with crisp fall afternoons. No season makes me quite as content and happy as Fall.
Husband and I both agreed this year to stay home for Christmas, the largest factor being how painful it was to look at prices to get home. I forever want to remember our first married Christmas, as well as share it with our family. The decision to blog does not happen often for me, but today is the day. It's a quiet morning in the Lake house, husband is sleeping, I have my coffee, and Dave Barnes is serenading me as I write.
We could not have asked for a more beautiful Christmas together (though, I continue to ask for snow--27 Christmases, and still no snow falling I am able to recollect--one in Arkansas with snow already on the ground, but I want to see a real Christmas day snow). I had my few tears on Christmas Eve, missing our families and wishing we could have made it to Texas, but we both know the memory of Christmas just the two of us, will be something we will always cherish. Thanksgiving was possibly a harder holiday to not be home, as all of my family was together, nieces, brand new nephew, and siblings. All I can do is pray that all of us can be together next year for the holidays.
On Christmas Eve we went out to our church, deciding to make the 45 minute drive then, instead of Christmas morning. Worshiping our Savior is the whole point of this holiday, the service was a great way to start our celebration. We both left thankful for our decision to start going to this church, even though the drives are long--we get a lot of quality time on the drives, so you won't hear me complaining.
Christmas morning we both woke up around 7:45am (after I restrained myself from waking husband up at 3:45--I am about 5 years old this time of year). I put our breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls and pigs in a blanket in the oven and we sat down to read our daily Bible reading. Husband had a great idea for stretching out Christmas over the whole morning--we would write our thank you notes as we opened presents. It is so nice to know they are all finished and we can put them in the mail today! We learned after the wedding, that thank you notes do not get done in a timely manner unless I have a little encouragement, not because I am not grateful, but just because I get distracted.
I learned something this weekend. While this whole blog was started last summer as I worked through trying to know myself better, I have not blogged my process of knowing the Lord and myself better. One thing that I now know I genuinely enjoy is cooking. I was unsure as we went into this weekend if I would want to cook everything I had planned, since a large part of my job is cooking for several hours each day. After all presents were opened and we were able to relax for a few hours, I got up to make our Christmas dinner of lamb and risotto. Suffice to say, I loved that three hours of cooking, and I am quite confident husband loved the three hours of mostly quiet, reading time.
For every family member, we love each of you and missed seeing you and sharing this holiday with you. Lord-willing we will have many holidays with you. Thank you for being gracious and understanding as we weren't with you.
I'll leave you with a link to some photos from our first 7 months of marriage. Thank you for being part of our lives!
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