I can’t just write a post about Christmas, because this holiday was about so much more than a day or two of family time, food and gifts. This year I actually FELT the spirit of Christmas. Not to say that every other year I have just gone through the motions, but so much about this Christmas was different. To start off with we are more financially “strapped” than we have ever been in our married life. This alone changed so much about the pressures of budgeting, shopping, spending, etc. I had made peace with the fact that this Christmas might LOOK a little different than years past…but I had also decided it was going to FEEL different too. I had this grand plan in my mind of time spent with my family decorating the house and baking goodies and making personalized gifts for our loved ones…and the only worry I had was “will there be enough time?” And the answer came in the form of 18″ of powdery white snow! YES! There will be plenty of time for a “Homemade Christmas.” So we flipped on the gas fireplace, turned up the Christmas music, baked cookies, made gifts, and played and played and played in the wintery white wonderland! Everything was festive, relaxed and running smoothly…it was fabulous! My brother ended up with two tickets to The Nutcracker that he gave to me. He chained up his 4-runner and drove Lexi and I downtown the Monday before Christmas and we had a great girl date. She LOVED the ballet and wants to take dance now! We wandered around downtown for a while, got a coffee/hot cocoa, got picked up by Ryan and drove around taking pictures and enjoying the sights of a white Christmas [this was the period of time when my cell phone jumped ship and was forever lost in a Portland snowdrift]. Tuesday night Bryce and I offered to trade “nightwatch” of each other’s kids with the neighbors so we could go for a walk in the snow. It was so nice to get out of the house, get some fresh air and get the blood movin’ again! Other than the lost phone, I was blissfully in love with Christmas 2008, until the calendar flipped to December 24th…and Bryce and I got in a lovely arguement over a mysterious splash of cat pee on our office windowsill and litterbox duty and household chores and work stress and job security and so on…and then the driving started -> to coffee with some friends -> to Hillsboro for brunch, games and presents with Bryce’s sister’s crew -> to Gladstone for dinner, presents and fun with my mom and my siblings -> and back home to bed at 10:00. Then the early morning tap-tap-tap on our pillows started shortly after Bryce and I got to bed (okay, not really, but it felt that way!). The five of us spent a few hours in the morning just us, and it was great. The kids opened some more presents, we played with new toys, and talked to Bryce’s parents on the new video phone they got us (our private family phone that only calls Grandma and Grandpa or Auntie Jen and Uncle Frank). Then we all headed out to my dad’s house to spend the evening with them. I feel so blessed to have so much of our family close by, it is great to see everyone for the holiday…but if money were no object I would rent a huge lodge and invite all our family to come to one place for a long weekend! All the packing up, loading up, and driving makes us crazy!
The Nutcracker Girl’s Date-
Late Night Snow Walk-
*there is a car under there!*
Christmas Eve favorites: cinnamon rolls, lego guys, pixos, DS games, candy and more candy, boxing with Uncle Pete!
Christmas Day favorites: Lexi and Liza’s matching socks, excited kids, baby dolls, transformers, webkinz, Operation
*Then my battery died before we got to my dad’s house 
But had it been charged, I would have taken pictures of Bailie and Bryce playing Guitar Hero, everyone eating Michelle’s yummy dinner by a cozy fireplace in the new dining room, the kids tearing through their last batch of presents, Kenzie and Lexi playing with a new computer game for hours, Dad and Bryce and Bailie jammin in the music room, me relaxing in Dad’s new chair massager, and all of us going into a post Christmas coma on the couch!
WHEW! What a wonderfully exhausting couple of days! This picture of Isaac pretty much sums up how we all felt driving home Thursday night.
3 Comments
December 30, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Your house looked great with the snow and the lights. That was so sweet of Ryan to take you girls to the nutcracker. I can just picture Lexi’s eyes as she watched the ballet. In your picture of the nightime walk, the lights in the snow looked amazing. There was a large building with a curved front in one of your pictures with a huge snowy field in the foreground. Was it a semi-famous building in Portland or was is just an old building?
Thanks so much for sharing your Christmas pictures and the insights about your celebration.
December 30, 2008 at 9:57 pm
My first time to your blog. Love the pictures. We should get together sometime. Your husband makes me laugh. He’s funny looking. By the way, the picture with the lights buried in the snow… how did you do that? You know where to find me.
Dennis
December 31, 2008 at 4:52 am
It’s never Christmas without a few arguments along the way……right?