Christmas Time is Here

I absolutely love this time of year.  I am sad we still have not received any snow (that has stuck to the ground), but hopefully we will as Christmas gets closer.

Dave and I have been married for 3.5 years and now that Sweet P is finally old enough to enjoy the holidays and get excited we have really changed how we are doing things from Thanksgiving to the New Year.

In years past the holidays have always been extremely stressful and Dave and I felt we had to please every single parent by making an appearance at whatever function they had going on (even when all three sets of parents had something the same day).  Well this year, through multiple requests and finally telling people we simply would not be available on certain days- WE ARE DOING OUR OWN THING!

Let's start with Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving was spent ten minutes away from our home with Dave's family.  It was very nice to have a low key, pj's kind of event where we were able to relax and get home at a decent time.  Eventually, as our kids grow older, Dave and I want to start doing Thanksgiving by ourselves, or doing a Thanksgiving potluck with close friends.  Dave and I actually started this, this year a couple of weeks before the offical day with some of our ward friends we have really hit it off with.  Everyone brought a Thanksgiving meal item and we gorged ourselves on delicious food, friendship and eventually pie and a game.  It was so much fun!

December...

Thanks to one of my best friends (Pinterest) I came up with the idea to do a 25 days of Christmas this year.  Each day we have something planned out to do as a family.  Family, meaning: Dave, Peyton and myself. Some of our activities involve going somewhere, some involve doing absolutly nothing but sitting as a family and playing with each other.  We are now five days into our calendar of events and it has been a lot of fun.  The greatest part is that Peyton get's so excited for that family time.

Because we have our month planned out we asked each of our parents to PLEASE plan a specific day (not Christmas Eve or Christmas Day) to have a family Christmas party or family dinner.  Thankfully, each of them agreed it was time to let us to start our own traditions and they each have their own party/dinner planned.  Those nights are part of our 25 days of Christmas so our activity for the day will be spent with extended family.

Here is how we have celebrated the last four days:

Decorating our house and watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas

First Presidency Christmas Devotional and making our 'famous' BBQ Chicken Pizza

Coloring a Christmas picture as a family.

We were celebrating my little brother's 18th birthday as well so the pictures were taken at my mom's

Watching Frosty The Snoman as a family

Ignore how exhausted we all look

So far we have loved this new tradition! 

What we have to look forward to the rest of the week:

* Gathering gently used sweaters and blankets to take to the homeless shelter
* Temple Square to see the lights and hot cocoa after
* Making our Christmas Ornaments
* Ward Christmas Party


I hope you have an enjoyable month and hopefully I will remember to update again before the new year!