We had a wonderful Christmas. Enjoy a few looks into our family’s memories from 2011.
Our advent calendar (made from toilet paper tubes) dictated daily fun for us.
It was a treat to eat s'mores (made in the microwave) and watch a Christmas show after dinner.We decorated the tree and Carter got the honor of putting up the tree topper this year.
My little loves.
We made our own gingerbread dough, cut out shapes and decorated them.
Playing with Christmas lights and camera settings. It was meant to be a Christmas card photo, but that never quite happened.
On "Snowman Day" we ate melted snowman soup in our scarves and hats.
It was warm enough to get outside and have fun with our family on Christmas Eve.
Um, yes, we did do the matching outfits thing.
There's nothing more special that experiencing Christmas through the eyes of my children.
Carter was old enough this year to understand the whole "Santa" thing and enjoy it. So we let him.
Carter woke up on Christmas morning not feeling so hot, which made him pretty cranky. I agree - no one should be sick on Christmas.
Evan was ok with letting others open his gifts for him. He was mostly interested in making sure he got a bottle.
I really, seriously can’t believe that I’ve let all of Christmas go by without making permanent any of the memories or experiences from the holiday. Thankfully, I took a lot of video and edited it all together to make one huge attempt at preserving what was the first Christmas that Carter really loved and was REALLY into.
I can say that this year was a little tough for me, having to hold back with buying gifts and doing fun things as a family that cost money. Yes, it can be gotten around and fun times were still had by all, but it wasn’t my favorite. I’ve really gone on quite a personal journey over this past month and I’m sure that I’ve arrived at a better place in the end.
This video is a little long. In it you’ll hear more of Carter singing. I’ll apologize now, because you also have to hear me sing. I’m not sure why I thought my voice wouldn’t really be picked up with the camera right by my head. Silly me. You’ll also see how spoiled Carter was by his grandparents. He had a grand ol’ time.
After days of sulking, I finally put my big girl panties on and got out of this house.
I spent an entire day spilling my deepest woes and most ridiculous thoughts. I wallowed in self-pity and I was, at times, completely irrational. My two friends, who actually seemed very proud of me for being an open person when I’m usually not, had to pull me back to good sense at times and were full of advice on how to handle and tackle things that seemed so tough to wrap my head around. It was just so refreshing to take off my filter for once.
And, I’m spending this Christmas season in a blur of baking and cooking and silly tv specials, warm drinks and great friends. I’m enjoying myself. At least for today, I’m feeling ok about the whole no gifts thing. As I’ve started to talk about it, I’m finding that it’s more the norm this year. Not everyone is scaling back just because of money, but because the money thing has started to put STUFF into a whole new, wasteful and worthless category. I think this new, better focus on the holidays is going to make it a much more memorable, less stressful time of year for a lot of people.
I think I’ll bake.
Thoughts on My Thoughts