Christmas

Christmas this year was really relaxing this year. I was having a bit of a hard time because I was really missing my family. It has been a few years since I have seen my family for Christmas and most of them were in Utah this year. On top of that, J had to work Christmas Eve and didn't even get home until 6. I tried to make the best of it and still planned our family traditions.

We started a few new one's this year. There are a lot of tree farms in the area so we decided to go and cut down our own Christmas tree. It was a lot of fun especially because this is the first time I have ever done that. It didn't disappoint Camo either. He had a blast.  Not to mention we enjoyed some delicious pumpkin donuts that the farm sells. I have made quite a few stops at this farm just to pick up pumpkin donuts. The only downfall was that the Christmas trees at a farm are so dang expensive. I think we paid almost 30 dollars for our 4 foot tree!! It fit perfectly in our house though!

 Next we decided to start the tradition of making gingerbread houses. We decided to do this because now we have kids that will really enjoy this activity.  J and I quite enjoyed it ourselves as well. I think J ended up building most of it because he couldn't stand to have pieces and frosting all out of place. He is a bit of a perfectionist. Maybe next year we will have to make two gingerbread houses so Camo can do whatever he wants to his.

Christmas eve I decided to do my family tradition of soups for dinner and acting out the Nativity. J wasn't so thrilled about the acting part, but I'm hoping each year he will be more willing do it. I had great memories growing up of doing this with my brother's and sister's. We invited his parents and J's sister and her family over. We made broccoli cheese soup and Zuppa Toscana soup. We also celebrated J's sister's birthday since it is on Christmas eve. We enjoyed some delicious cheesecake. Since J's mom could not be at our Christmas eve dinner because of work, we decided to go to her work and surprise her. She works at a nursing home. We decided to bring a few items to act out our Nativity while we were there. I think the boys quite enjoyed going to visit their Grandma.

Christmas day we opened presents from Santa at our house. Camo loved all of his gifts. His favorite was probably the play dough. He also really enjoyed his remote control car. We then went over to J's sister's house for a brunch. We made waffles and she made her sausage egg bake. The rest of the day was really relaxing and all the cousins played really well together.

In no particular order, here are some pictures from the month of December.