A merry Christmas

I got the flu for New Years.  I don’t know, I think that doesn’t bode  well for 2015? 🙂  It’s been 8 days now, and I’m starting to come out of the fog and exhaustion.  I don’t know if I’ve ever had the flu before but, wow, it’s a doozy.

I’m making a cup of coffee, lighting a candle, and going back through Christmas pictures, our favorite little moments from this year to share with you here.

We had such a lovely Christmas, quiet and simple as it was.  We really love being home on Christmas morning and creating our own traditions as a new little family.  We are spoiled to have family nearby and we do love to try and see them around Christmas, but Christmas morning is sort of sacred.  With two kids’ birthdays the week of Christmas, it’s essential to be really picky-choosy about what we can manage

I so much want our kids to have a happy and cozy home to be in, a place where there is love, laughter, good food, forgiveness and grace, and a lot of the Spirit of Christ.  I want to create happy Christmas morning memories like I have of our home growing up.  Of course, our Christmas morning was sweet + fun, and also filled with lots of tears and petty fights that had to be settled.  You know, the usual.

I made these Eggnog Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and they were a WIN.  Yum.

We got going slowly after that.  We don’t want to make the day all about the gifts, the getting, the materialism, but at the same time, we love giving the gifts.  There truly is something magical and plain GOOD about a time of year when you just want to shower everyone you love with good things.  We’ve seen some lean years in our nearly nine years of marriage, and it was a happy joy this year for both Brandon and I to be able to give each other gifts.  We find ourselves around Christmas easily sucked into all the consumerism and wanting to give our kids All The Things, so we tried a little system this year that we heard from some friends.  Each of us got four gifts: something to read, something to wear, something you want, and something you need.  It really helped us be intentional with our gift-giving and keep ourselves from getting carried away with plastic toys.

After all the opening was done, and naps were had by all, my brother + sis-in-law came over for Christmas dinner.  What a sweet thing it is to be together over a meal and celebrate what Christ did for us, leveling all the obstacles, clearing the way for us to come back to God by coming down to earth.  Emmanuel, God with us.

Hope so much you had a Merry Christmas, too, and already having a happy start to the New Year!  I’ll leave you with this little sequence of pictures, a slice of real life. 😉