Christmas

Christmas when you’re married (or in any relationship where you’re close to someone else’s family) can be tricky. My family alone celebrates Christmas Eve with our huge extended family on my moms side followed by Christmas morning with our immediate family. But now I have Blaine’s family to think about. This year my mom had to work on Christmas so planning wasn’t hard. Big Christmas Eve with my huge family, Christmas day with Blaine’s and then belated Christmas with my family a few days later. Done. Three Christmas celebrations. I guess four if you count Blaine and I taking a few minutes before we left town to open our presents to each other. I love being able to see everyone, catch up, play games, etc. It’s just such a warm atmosphere that I wish we could all be around all the time.

Our extended family Christmas party is one I always look forward to. I have so much family on my mom’s side that it’s so easy to not see some of them for months and months. For the last few years we usually end up playing a game like Apples to Apples. Then there’s always the white elephant gift exchange and bingo. This year was the first year there was a baby in the family since my 10 year old cousin was born! So of course everything smothered that poor little girl with love and I got more baby pressure than ever. As always, it was fun and I love being around that large, loud family.

Christmas day at my in-laws is a lot more low key and mostly consisted of us spending the first half of the day in pajamas, watching TV and eating too many chocolate coins. Or maybe that’s just what I did all day. Then my dad came over (since mom was working) and hung out for a bit before heading back up to Tehachapi. We opened presents, had dinner and hung out. I got a few sets of oven mitts and had a good laugh about it because Blaine’s mom hates ours so I definitely know why those were in our pile of presents this year.

At the end of my week, my mom had a few days off so we hung out and opened presents at our house then did a few more the next day at my parents house then hung out, laughed at old pictures and ate pizza. All in all this holiday season was amazing and full of family which I am so thankful for. And, of course, we got some great “Christmas loot” as my sister an I like to call it.