Things to remember this Christmas:

Note: I just reread this. Sorry for the abundance of parentheses I used. (I just can't stop using them.)

1. The hunt for the perfect Christmas tree: Actually that didn't take too long. We found one short enough to be cheap but tall enough that the girls were willing to take it home. 

The two grizzly (possibly drunk) mountain-men tree guys got a kick out of the girls running around their tree lot. 

And the girls loved it when they "trapped" their tree.

In the end the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree did not compare to the great hunt for a Christmas tree stand. And since we refused to buy one more expensive than the tree, we spent an afternoon store-hopping trying to find a place that wasn't sold out of tree stands. 

2. Snow!:  Months ago when we started bribing Kendyl to be good with the possibilty of Santa delivering presents (don't tell me you've never done it. and if you truely haven't you're a better person than me), we told her it would be Christmas when it snowed. So when the tree was decorated and presents starting appearing under the tree Kendyl started getting very frustrated. She doesn't have a very good grasp on the concept of time yet. All she knew was if there's white stuff on the ground she could start unwrapping. She would look outside then throw herself on the ground and cry, "It is NEVER EVER going to be Christmas!!" Luckily on Christmas Eve we had the first snowfall. It was pretty magical to watch...if you were 2 or even 27. 

Being from CA I am totally okay with not experiencing a white Christmas. I hate snow. Hate having to bundle up to go outside. Hate hate hate cold. So I was happy that the first "snow" was a couple flakes that never stuck. And happy Kendyl got her snow.

A few days later it snowed a little harder and at our friends house the girls were able to make a little snowman. Still there 24 hours later.

(See dot of white in the center)

3. Target wedding registry shopping for ourselves: Because that's what it felt like. Total deja vu from five years ago. "Is this blender worth the extra money? What about this toaster? How do you feel about this color for measuring cups?" And if it wasn't for the two wild toddlers we brought along (never again) it seriously felt like registering for our wedding. Except for round 2 we weren't fighting the entire time. :-) I admit I was a little OCD the first time around about our kitchen color combination and getting the right look by having matching stainless steel toasters and blenders. I have now come to the conclusion that function matters more. And who cares if my towels match since I'll be replacing them someday. (And if you are reading this and have no idea why I'm talking about rebuying all my wedding gifts it's because that's what we've desperately needed to do since we got rid of 80% of everything we owned to move here 8 months ago.) So after buying two shopping cartfuls of house-goods I am excited to announce we are a fully functioning household. It sounds cliché but it really does put a smile on our faces every time we fill up a REAL glass of water, sit down to eat dinner, eating off of a REAL plate, with REAL utensils, eating food we made with our REAL measuring cups, REAL bowls and pots, and REAL knives. A novel idea I know. Feel free to come over to eat whenever! And if you want to stay over we even have extra towels now.

4. Presents!: Since it was our first Christmas at our own home we wanted to make sure we the girls had an amazing Christmas. We felt we owed it to them because of the crazy year they've gone through. The night before as we were wrapping things we've slowly saved for, collected, and bought over the last few months we were surprised how much we had to wrap. (Also thanks to both our parents who contributed to the abundance under our tree.) So all in all the girls had a fabulous Christmas. 98% of the presents under the tree were for them. The bar for next year is probably set a little too high. I did alright with a stocking full of my two favorites, Nutella and Ruby Red Grapefruit juice. 

p.s. Whoever can't guess Kendyl's color obsession (and I do mean obsession) from the following pictures you are invited to her room and you can experience it there. (Think Emerald City goes purple.) I even had to buy her a new pack of underwear all in purple because I was doing laundry way too often to accommodate her wearing the one pair she had before. Since purple and pink things are normally packaged together by default Josie has been assigned pink. But even though the girls got many of the same presents (thank goodness) we even had to do a couple last minute present swaps depending on the ratio of pink and purple a gift had. 

Josie's loot-

Kendyl's loot-

The aftermath:

Our house looks like an explosion of girl. 

Maybe someday we'll have to switch gears and do the blue and Lego thing. Not this year!

5. New Years!: On New Year's Eve I told Nathan, "Aren't you excited to end the last day of the worst year of our married life so far?" And we were. It truly has been a hard one and we are grateful to put it behind us. At the same time we have so many things to be grateful for at the start of this one. We feel so very blessed by many, many small things (and big things) we now enjoy.

We celebrated with sparking cider at 11:15pm. Despite our big plans to make it until 12 (yet to on a New Year's Eve since we've been married) we failed and went to sleep. We wanted to make it extra special this year so earlier that day we took the girls to Cafe Rio and made a trip to Target (bytheway we now live 2 minutes away so we frequent there often) and each picked out a treat. The girls ate their purple popsicles, went to bed, and we started another marathon of Hogan's Heroes. Ever since Nate got it that's all we ever watch anymore. We woke really late and then I went shopping! First time in years I've actually gone shopping at the mall with a decent amount of money to spend. What I really wanted to find were some cute boots and I found a lot of good options (for other people with normal feet). I have come to the sad conclusion that I will never buy another pair of shoes in my lifetime. Or I should just make a doctor's appointment. By some miracle Nate entertained the girls in the mall for A FEW HOURS and no one including Nathan 1) ran away 2) was lost 3) abducted or 4) kicked out.

6. Our new apartment: We love love love it! But that's another post for another day. 

Hope your Christmas season was as good to you as ours was to us!