Merry Christmas 2019! For lack of a better phrase, it was so a Christmas to remember since – for the first time in the history of our little family being a little family – we were on our own for Christmas. We missed our families and the traditions we’ve known for forever, but it was time. I mean, we have four kids!! Four kids feels like a lot (haha, maybe because it is??), the girls are getting a little older (at least the older ones are 😉 ), and we spent the week of Thanksgiving at home just three weeks ago, so yes. I called the shot that Christmas 2019 would be our first solo holiday season and between not having to travel and coming up with our own traditions, and by golly, did we still have a jolly holiday… 🙂
A few shots from our annual Christmas Kick-Off! We decorated in our Christmas jammies while watching the Christmas Devotional with dimmed lights and hot cocoa in hand…
Lone pic of Chloe at Christmas event in our neighborhood — I managed to just snag that one shot of her and nothing else about the night (oops)!
The rest of the photos below are from Christmas Eve Day and Christmas Day, starting with a couple Christmas-y things around the house that made my heart sing, like some of our favorite ornaments (those unreal portrait ornaments are made by my friend here)…
Some of our favorite tiny figurines from our downstairs tree…
Olivia made these Nativity ornaments for the girls’ tree up in the playroom one day in early December, and I died over them. These are going in the family treasury (as of now, we have a family treasury)!!
We did a handful of really awesome things in an effort to carve out our own traditions for Christmas, but I do regret that I didn’t help the girls make sister gifts happen. I was done with all of my Christmas shopping on Black Friday, and the girls only asked about giving gifts to each other once, so initially I felt efficient by not taking them shopping for each other but gosh, there is something so, so sweet about siblings being thoughtful of each other and loving via special little presents. So! Next year or else, we’re exchanging sister gifts. I did try to redeem us this year with these last-minute love notes below — I had the idea pop into my head for each of us to fill out the little notes below (I made them in about a minute in Illustrator) for every member of the family and to leave them in our stockings to read on Christmas morning. Christmas Even found us all huddled around the table talking, drawing, and writing about each other and sheesh, talk about dropped balls bouncing back — the whole thing was a hit. We’re repeating this one next year plus sister gifts. Or else. 😉
By far the most magical part of our holiday was the day of Christmas Eve and that it was so relaxed. Ryan and I couldn’t get over how – for the first time in our married lives, so the last 10 years – we were having a Christmas Even without a single ounce of “rush.” We’re used to bouncing between our families in St. George and meeting others’ demands to make our families’ traditional Christmas Eves happen but there was none of that and it was something we really needed. We spent the entire day together — we woke up, had breakfast, wrote those loves notes above, made a gingerbread house, whipped up some Christmas treats, took a walk, and got ready for dinner with friends. Chill chill CHILL. We loved it.
After dinner with our friends, we read the Nativity Story and then it was off to bed. I never want to forget how we did not sleep the night of Christmas Eve thanks to a particular little girl in the brigade that just could not sleep…Olivia was up all night, so excited for Christmas morning. She first came into my room around 2:00 AM to tell me that she had had a good dream and was “just up for a sec.” I was delirious and told her to go back to bed and fell asleep again, but she stayed up from there on out and periodically came to tell me things from there about what was going on, like how Santa had “seriously landed on the roof! He’s here!” and how she looked out her window and saw reindeer running around on the street. And she was not kidding. The sleep deprivation caused a little hallucinating, I believe, haha! She had never stayed awake for so long — or had so much adrenaline pumping through her little body? It was darling and draining all at once, and she crashed on Christmas Day. Staying awake all night on Christmas Eve — a childhood rite of passage. 🙂
Anyway, on to Christmas Morning!
The girls received American Girl Dolls and outfits, a doll jeep, a basketball hoop from Dad, and a bracelet maker from Mom, so we spent the rest of the day PLAYING. And sleeping (Ryan and Olivia!) and beach walking (the rest of the girls and me). And eating and eating and hitting the sack early. It was a sweet, perfect-for-us-right-now Christmas Day and it really just made my heart feel grateful. Grateful for our home, our little fam, new traditions, and above all, so grateful for the old, familiar feelings of love for our dear Savior and the humble beginnings of His honorable life that Christmas always brings. “God be thanked for the matchless gift of His Divine Son.” Merry Christmas!
