Merry Christmas

Our Christmas started early this year. My brother and sis-in-law, Kristen, came down for a weekend two weeks before Christmas. We celebrated the Christmas season with our favorite traditional game of all time. Find the money. Every year on Christmas Eve, my Dad hides a bunch of $5 bills around the house. Me, Mark, Kristen, and Tommy all demolish the house in hopes of finding the most. My Mom can be found trailing behind us tweaking and "fixing" what we had disassembled for that treasured 5 dollar bill. You would think that a bunch of adults would be careful, well, maybe 3 of them are, but not me! Actually, Connor found the first $5 by accident on a soft decoration, and the game snowballed from there.

Afterwards, we exchanged gifts, which is more Connor exchanging gifts now. That's where the magic is. It's all about the kids on Christmas once they are here. It makes everything so much more meaningful. I mean, what's better than a little kid scrounging around such a large gift bag in hopes for more?

Two weeks later was Christmas...again. I wanted Connor to grow up knowing the reason why we celebrate this holiday, so I started reading this book called "Tiny, Baby Jesus" to him. He finally said, "Jesus," and I felt better about the extravagant gifts he was about to receive.

Christmas Eve was Mom's birthday celebration at their house. The only good thing about not having to travel for Christmas was letting my Mom have the day all to herself. Since we didn't have two other house to go to, we did our Christmas stuff with my parents on the actual day. But, still, we missed Tom's side of the family, and the special Christmas champagne at Jim's house.

(End of tangent)

That night, Tom and I opened a bottle of wine, and set up Santa's doings. The house was warm, inviting, and energized with the excitement of Christmas the next day.

Christmas morning was so fun! One of our traditions that we started last year is taking a picture of Connor coming down the stairs and peaking through the stairway to see what Santa brought. I'm sure he'll show more excitement in the coming years!

After littering the living room floor with wrapping paper, playing with all his new toys, and eating our traditional hot cinnamon roll Christmas breakfast, Connor was pooped, and so were we. It was time for a cartoon and relaxing.This kind of prolonged cuddling is very rare, so I took it while I could!

Once Mimi and Papa came over with more presents from Santa, it was go, go, go for the rest of the day...

This Christmas definitely goes in the books as one of my favorite. There is a certain spirit in the air when celebrating with a child, especially our own. Hearing Connor "ooh, ahh, and wow" over his gifts was a lot of fun. We look forward to many more holiday memories where family traditions become a familiarity, and happiness truly triumphs any struggles or stress in our lives.