Christmas seems to be changing every year for us right now. We have two families to spend Christmas with, more people to include, and this year having Evelyn meant we wanted a bit more time for ourselves, too. But in the end trying to squeeze it all together worked out pretty well. The absolute best thing is that we do Christmas Eve with Gerrit’s family and Christmas Day with mine (no more trying to squeeze multiple Christmases into a single morning!).
Christmas Eve morning we opened presents with Gerrit’s family. It felt a little weird to both of us, but I think we’ll manage to get used to it. ;) And then it was time for our 6th Annual Graham Cracker House Competition (in which no one actually wins but everyone claims that they do). Gerrit and I decided to build a log cabin this year (much better than our attempt at The Duomo last year).
In the evening was Christmas Eve dinner followed by church followed by dessert.
Christmas morning at our house was more fun than I expected. Santa brought Evelyn a few things and, while she had no idea what was going on, she really enjoyed looking at/playing with some of her new toys.
But then it was rush rush rush to get out the door to get to my family’s Christmas for present opening and Christmas Day lunch (our other change this year: lunch instead of brunch).
My dad made a prime rib (delicious!), I made the Pioneer Woman’s creamy potatoes (good, but I completely underseasoned them, so they need some work). We had rolls and salads and my mom made brussels sprouts with bacon which is new to us (I know, I’m so behind) and which we all absolutely love. And for dessert it was platters full of Christmas goodies.
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas filled with family and good food.
Sounds like a lovely holiday. Splitting up holidays is hard, but it’s helpful that your families are so close together! With one family in Ohio and one in Connecticut, we’ve divided winter break into two halves, one for each family, but I imagine it’ll get more complicated once kids are in the picture.
Abby–we are definitely lucky to have our families all in one place. We talked about that multiple times over Christmas!