We hope everyone had an amazing Christmas vacation with loved ones! I can’t believe that 2015 will be here in 3 days! 2014 was a great year, we met so many amazing people and we can’t wait to see what 2015 has in store for us! Mike and I had a great time together over Christmas and I’m here to share it with you :)

Our Christmas celebrations started Tuesday night actually… Our church had 6 Christmas eve services and so we decided to go to the one on Tuesday night and invited Mike’s parents to come along. It was a great service as usual. Christmas Eve came and Mike had to work a half day and I ran some last minute errands. Christmas Eve was always a big night for my family while I was growing up. Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember we would come home from church, have shrimp and bacon wrapped water chestnuts and all sorts of other hors d’ourves and then sit down to watch National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Best. Movie. Ever! Early on in our relationship Mike experienced watching Christmas Vacation with my dad and I, and didn’t have much fun, as my dad and I end up reciting ALL the lines as the movie is playing. Since we’ve gotten married, Mike and I have always watched a different movie on Christmas Eve each year, but this year Mike surprised me and bought us the DVD of Christmas Vacation which we watched on Christmas Eve. I was pretty excited and promised not to recite every line of the movie, which proved to be harder then I thought! So, we sat down on Christmas Eve and watched Christmas Vacation while eating shrimp, bacon wrapped scallops, homemade spinach dip and mini caprese bites. We had enough food for 10 people! After the movie we always open our stocking presents. I love that I’ve been able to continue one of my favorite family traditions with Mike.

Christmas morning came and you would have though that Mike and I were little kids again. We get so excited about this time together. It just stinks that it’s over so fast. Both Mike and I ended up waking up around 5am and couldn’t go back to sleep. So around 5:30 we decided to get up and get the day started. We put a Nat King Cole Christmas record on the record player, loaded our plates with long johns from Achenbach’s Bakery (these are also a Christmas tradition and are the most amazing donuts, if you aren’t sure what they are), started the coffee and opened our gifts. This year wasn’t supposed to be an amazing gift giving year or anything. Mike and I are actually trying to pay off the remainder of my school loans in 2015 so we can be debt free other then our mortgage, so this year was just supposed to be simple. Little did I know but Mike had something up his sleeve. You see, it’s hard for Mike to surprise me because I manage our finances and I end up seeing anything he spends money on. Because of this he asked to have his bonus check split into two so that he could bring one home to make me think that was his bonus while he went and cashed the other half. He has found very creative ways to keep things from me :) After we were done opening everything Mike got up and pulled a small box out from behind a pillow. Now ladies, you all know only awesome things come in tiny boxes! There has only been two things that I’ve ever mentioned that I would want in a tiny little box, and they are diamond stud earrings or a matching band to go above my wedding band and engagement ring. I opened the box to find the matching band to go with my rings. I was floored and had no idea how he pulled this off! We are calling it our anniversary band since our 5 year is coming up in April. Mike said he was planning on giving the ring to me for our anniversary but when they said it could be in for Christmas he was just too excited and couldn’t wait. Days later and I’m still starring at my hand! He totally surprised me!

Around lunch on Christmas we headed to Mike’s parents where we spent the rest of our day. The rest of the weekend was just spent spending time together and having fun. I love all the memories we are creating together! It was quite the whirlwind of a weekend but it was great!