Christmas Day 2011

This is now my second Christmas married, and I have come to a conclusion about it. It's really profound, so get ready.

Married Christmases are different than single Christmases.

Yep, it's true.

Both lovely in their own way, but adjusting to the change was/is a little challenging.

Last year it took me by surprise. I had no idea how hard it would be to spend Christmas away from my Mom and Dad. I was irrationally emotional and didn't even understand myself what was going on. I totally didn't expect to react that way. But this year I prepared myself a bit better, and best of all, I got to spend Christmas with both sets of my parents :)



It was a wonderfully simple day. We hosted Christmas morning at our house where we had brunch, reflected on why we celebrate Christmas and then opened our gifts.





It was a really special Christmas to me in a couple ways, but the biggest reason was because of the gift we've been given this year that we haven't been able to see yet.

{insert baby's name here}



Oh how I wish I could just say her name! But for some reason, I just don't want to until she's born. However, if you ask me, I'll tell you ;) Most everyone around me knows her by name already!

It seemed as though everyone had put thought into including little miss into this Christmas and it was fun to open a few special presents for her... or for her Daddy ;)





Steve and I each received a very special present this year to remind us of this time in our lives. This is from my Mom and Dad...



and this was from me to Steve {but it was really from the baby ;)}





I had wanted to save this for when the baby was actually born, but decided that Christmas was more than appropriate :)

After Christmas morning wrapped up, we spent the afternoon playing with some new toys and relaxing. Later that evening Steve and his Mom and Dad and I went to my parents house where we had Christmas dinner with them and my brother Dan.

We shared a lot of stories along with favorite Christmas memories and I was really blessed by Steve's Dad's account of his favorite Christmas... the one Steve was born. It really touched me to see and feel how much love we have in our family and I am overflowing with thankfulness that we get to bring this baby into our lives and home where it will be so loved and cherished.

Remembering that Christmas is truly about the Love of Christ is how I reckon myself with the lack of "Christmas Spirit" I felt this year. Somehow, not feeling the "hustle and bustle" so much this year made me realize that the love we have for each other and from God is the best gift we can ever give/receive.

Merry Christmas everyone :)

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

and everything finally came together... peaceful and serene. Oh wait, we were up til 2am fixing food and wrapping presents ;)

It was a beautiful Christmas Eve though. We spent it at Grandma's house with a nice dinner and afterwards came home with Mom and Dad Robinson to finish getting ready. When all was said and done, Mom and I took some pictures of the house before all the presents were opened.





In years past, I have always jumped the gun on Christmas decorating. In fact, 2 years ago when Steve and I got engaged, we bought our tree the night before Thanksgiving. This year, we didn't buy it until December 10th. Because we have had a lot of projects going on since we moved. We removed the carpet from both the living room and dining room and the baby's room, revealing beautiful hardwoods. Hardwoods that desperately needed some refinishing. So that project happened beginning of December... and it's a big project. So no decorating was begun until the floors were completely done.

Even then, I thought, "the more I put up, the more I have to take down" so I didn't put much up. Til Christmas Eve... when I decided the house needed more sparkle. So I did what I could with what I had to make the house twinkly and I was happy with the outcome :)





This is a view into our front room that used to be a front porch but has been remodeled (not by us) to an additional room in the house.



This is the other side of the front room. Eventually, when the baby is a little older, this will be the play room :)



And here is the living room, looking in from the front room.



And from the other side of the living room... you can see how the front is connected.



I wanted to wait until next year when it's officially Baby's first Christmas to get her stocking and all so this year I just bought this mini Yankees stocking and we put a little Aflac duck we had in it and hung it on the tree... lol



And since we don't have a chimney, fireplace or appropriate stairway for stockings, this is how it went down this year! I'd like to come up with something better for the future :) But I thought this was cute for now :)

Merry Christmas 2011!

The Christmas Present 2010

I love my husband for so many reasons. One of them is for his gift-giving abilities. He has a knack for picking out very thoughtful, yet useful gifts.

On my birthday, and the day we started dating, he brought me an 8 gig memory card. I ran the gamut of a few emotions and thoughts before settling on the fact that had not been lost on me.

The last thing I expected was a gift (since we actually didn't cross the "will you go out with me" phase til later that evening). I sincerely did not expect anything. But he knew better than me, and apparently knew I needed a new card... which I have been so thankful for on so many occasions. He sees things like that, that I just don't see.

Last year on Valentine's Day he bought me an air popper for popcorn. Again, I cocked my head to one side and said, "thank you???" In my head only of course! But don't you know I love that air popper! I use it all the time. To me, a thoughtful gift that will be used, and something I wouldn't think to buy myself is a good one.

I wish I had the same gift-giving ability he has! Thankfully, he hasn't bought me a toilet brush or something like that :P But you see, that isn't really thoughtful, so why would that even cross his mind? Exactly... :)

At any rate, we both had a hard time at Christmas this year. I felt like married Christmas was different than engaged Christmas... now all our money is the same... so we had to speak with each other on what we could afford/we felt was appropriate. And to justify what he wanted to get me, he ended up telling me ahead of time so that we could make sure it fit in our financial status.

And oh did it ;)



The one on the left there. Yep, that's what he got me! A lovely match to my other monitor, 3 inches smaller, but such an awesome addition!

I thought it was excessive at first, but I have come to just love having the two monitors side by side. Instead of tabbing all over the place I can keep so much more open (much the the chagrin of my hard drive) But I really like having internet on one side, photoshop on the other... etc. It's so convenient :)

Anyways, here's the a great Christmas present! And as an aside, because my office was so messy and full of boxes, it took me like 6 weeks to be able to set it up. The two of us set out to clean this office/guest room a couple weeks ago, and now I have pictures to show! But that will be tomorrow ;)

i love you, no i hate you

This is the conversation I had over and over with my Christmas tree. While I have no pictures of our trek through the tree farm to find it, I do have the picture I showed you yesterday.



There were so many things about this tree that I loved. It was near perfectly shaped, though I really do like a good Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The tradition in me says I have to have a perfect tree but someday maybe I'll have two trees. One perfect and one scrawny gangly tree ;)

For the last 4 years I have waited to use these hibiscus lights I got from IKEA. They hung in my bedroom for a looooong time, but I knew they would be just perfect on a Christmas tree. A little bit of tropical to this symbol of the cold winter we are enduring.



I also came across some vintage flower petal lights that I had saved from one of my Mom's merciless attic cleanings. She had used them when I was a kid and knowing someday I would like to see them used again, I stashed them away.

Someday also I hope to steer away from the dozens of ornaments I have like this:



They're certainly pretty I think, but they are lacking in style. I like things to be different and a little funky. This just seems too traditional.

My favorite ornament this year though was our "first Christmas" ornament. We bought it while we were on our honeymoon and if I didn't tell you it was a first Christmas ornament you would never know. That's why I love it ;) It's special :)



There were a few other special ornaments on the tree this year. I didn't take pictures of all of them, but a few that I really love.

This is one of my first ornaments. It's not my first Christmas one, my mom still has that. But I just love this rocking horse. It's been around literally as long as I can remember.



Then this one is one I remember picking out on vacation one year when I was very young. Probably 6 or 7. I don't often see ornaments that pop out at me, I don't like ornaments for the sake of ornaments. Which is probably why I don't really like the Christmas balls I have so many of. But I do like them when they have a meaning or I think are exceptionally pretty.



And the most special of all is this one.



It found its place front and center on the tree flagged by two of my other favorites, the dragonfly and butterfly. It was the ornament Steve gave to me on the night he proposed :)

Now, here's where the part about how I hate this Christmas tree comes in.

It was big. Our apartment is small. I had to move our loveseat into our bedroom and my dresser into the living room to make space for it. So for a month, I had a 2 inch passageway to squeeze into the laundry room and was putting my underwear away in front of anyone who happened to be visiting at the time.

At first it was ok. Because I loved that beautiful tree. But as the weeks wore on, I grew to despise the lack of space. Then there was the fact that from the time we chopped that sucker down it dropped copious amounts of needles. Everyone asks me the same questions:

Was it a fresh cut? Yes

Did you water it daily? Yes

Check and check. But still, the amount of needles dropped from that thing were almost incomprehensible. I don't think there is a way I could explain how many needles dropped without sounding like I'm exagerrating... but trust me when I say I scooped up enough to fill at least 1 gallon jug INSIDE the house, and what was left at the burn pile may have been another half gallon jug.





This was obviously after the tree was taken down... and I had already vacuumed about 4 times in the process of undecorating the tree. Which, in retrospect, I learned a valuable lesson about. Vacuums don't like pine needles. The entire length of my vacuum hose was chock full of needles. I had to scoop them out with a fork. Then instead of vacuuming up the mess above I swept most of it first and tossed them in a bag by hand.

Thank goodness that tree is gone. I can only hope that by next Christmas we have a better place to put one. Since if we had space for it, I'd be happier to deal with the mess it made ;)

Christmas letter 2010

2010 Christmas card

I usually think of myself as a person who doesn't think to do things til it's too late. And I would say that is true a good portion of the time, but really, who isn't like that?

I mean, who really has enough spare time to plot out extra time later on for something they wouldn't have time for even if they planned? That didn't make much sense... but this post is all about the fact that I did think that far in advance. Props to me... err, or something like that.

Now, for the main point. I present to you this year's Christmas card.



It's a 2 sided 5x7.

I would also like to share the story behind this card. Most definitely not my original intent (here's where I pause to reflect on how many years are to come of this same story being true because of children...) Originally, it was supposed to be us kissing under the mistletoe. But it was cold, and we were using a timer. And I wasn't using my brain apparently. So when I got inside, these were the good ones. Let's roll with it! I actually love the way it turned out :)

And since I only had a limited number I was able to actually send out this year, I thought it would be nice to share for all you who didn't get to see :)

I also wrote a Christmas letter... who wants to see that?

Stuff I did over Christmas

I had good intentions of writing a detailed post about my travels with Steve over Christmas, but seeing as how it's almost 2 months in the past now I am going to skip over the bulk of it and just share the pictures I had already prepared for a post.

At first glance, all the plans we had made for Christmas break seemed so exciting... But when broken down day by day it quickly became an awful lot. and most definitely taught Steve and I a thing or two about what it will be like to live together all the time once we're married.

We spent actual Christmas day at my parents' house with my younger brother and one of my older brothers and his family. The day after Christmas we drove to PA to help Steve's parent finish moving from here to there. His dad got laid off of his 20+ year job here in Rochester just this past august but quickly got a new one in PA. So he moved pretty much right away and had been living by himself until about the end of November when Steve's mom finally was able to move down there with him. So, currently they are still trying to sell their house that's here, but are planning to move into a new town house that's being built in a few weeks.



Anyways, we stayed there overnight and then headed down to MD and stayed a few nights with my Aunt Sally and Uncle Ron. While we were there we spent a day at the Naval Academy where my uncle gave us a nice tour. I had been there many times before as my brother attended there when I was much younger but it was Steve's first time going.





This is the Navy Cathedral, so beautiful. I could only imagine how amazing a wedding would be in here.





Steve took this, I love the reflection of light on the wall.



When I was a little girl, we would come often to visit my brother at the Acedemy, and this is one of the things I remember most clearly. Tecumseh. I have a picture of when I was little next to him, so I wanted one when I was all grown up ;)

The next day we went to DC where we pretty much froze our butts off. We didn't stay long because it was just ridiculous.



I tried to stay warm, but it just wasn't working!

At that point we moved to my brother's house and stayed for a few days through New Years and then drove to NYC to spend the day with Steve's grandma, mom and dad and sister. We did as much sightseeing in the city as we really could but it was so unbearably cold that we didn't do nearly as much as we would have liked.



Elmo and Cookie look innocent enough, but I assure you, they are dirty little men in those outfits. But I wanted a picture with them so I endured ha!

So that was my Christmas vacation... oh so late, but this blog is as much for my own journaling purposes than for anything else and I'd hate to not remember things just because the timing was off. I so enjoy going back in my blog and re-reading things from the past. Especially blogs from the same month it is right now. It is often very encouraging to see that I'm either going through the same feelings or possibly doing better than I was then, which is always nice to find out :)

santa's helpers

nuff said.