Christmas

I love Christmas. It was so fun this year, especially with Oliver, but also because we got to celebrate with my mom's side of the extended family for the first time in four years. There's a lot  of people in her family, so my parents' house was packed and busy and chaotic. Just like Christmas should be. We have a lot of family traditions, ranging from our Christmas Eve piñata to my grandfather telling a story that we refer to as the Johnny/gingerbread story. We acted out the nativity story and we got to have Oliver play baby Jesus, while Sam and I were Joseph and Mary.  Christmas Day we had a huge, delicious breakfast first thing, and then started in on stockings and presents. I'm already looking forward to the next year and the ones after when Oliver will actually be able to enjoy things. Delicious food, caroling, family, lights, cookies, chocolate...all the best things to wrap up the year.

christmas is coming

This is almost always my favorite time of year.  I love the cold weather, the snow, the baking, singing carols, wrapping presents, decorating... basically, all of it.  This is the fourth Christmas of our marriage, and we have a few traditions (though I'm not sure any of them will happen this year).  My family has a lot of Christmas traditions, and Sam's has none (that I'm aware of) so my family tends to be a little overwhelming in the holiday season.  I love having Oliver around this year, even though he isn't exactly aware that anything different is happening.  I do think he likes starting at the lights on the Christmas tree, since lights are just about his number one favorite thing to look at. 

We put the tree up early this year, because who doesn't love getting plenty of Christmas tree time in?  We've also been busy putting up other decorations, listening to Christmas music, and baking our favorite cookies.  We started with gingerbread cookies and then my personal favorite, sugar cookies/chocolate pepper cookies.  You roll them out at the same time and layer the cookies together and they are so delicious, they don't need any frosting or decorating at all. On Sunday evening, we went to a live nativity. Afterward, a surprising amount of people thought that Oliver had played baby Jesus, so we had to keep correcting them. Now there are still gifts to be bought and wrapped, more carols to be sung and parties attended, still more cookies to make. We have just over a week to go and I love this time of year.