Reliving Christmas

Erik and his sisters, circa 1970's

It will take a few posts but I hope to relive Christmas over the coming days.  It was an amazing 1.5 weeks for our family, as we traveled across the state and visited with all of our family.  As I write I am listening to the beautiful sound of my Christmas present, a Roomba, clean my house for me.  Seriously, the best present ever!  My husband hut a home run with this one.  For a girl who hates to vacuum this was the best gift!

We started the holiday off with lots of class parties.  Santa even stopped in to say hi at Lucy's party!

After school dismissed half a day on the Friday before Christmas we loaded up the car and headed to East Tennessee to spend time with Erik's family.  We sure missed his sister who lives in DC and her daughter who was visiting Chile this Christmas for 2 weeks.  Thankfully everyone else came and we did some major family bonding over a 5 day period.  The weather was super yucky so we were stuck inside most of the time, but we did manage a few walks around the cup-du-sac each day to keep Lucy's legs limber and our sanity in place.  There were lots of trips to feed the donkeys who live in the neighbor's yard and several rides in the wagon around the house.  Most of all we had a great time baking cookies, making crafts and just being together as a family.

When Erik and I first got married we lived only one block from his sister and her family.  We were able to see her first baby be born and watched her step-son from the age of three become a part of our family. We had the great opportunity to live in the same town for about 5 years and I can honestly say we took that time for granted.  Now we don't live close to any of his family.  His parents are 6 hours away, his middle sister is 9 hours and his oldest sister is at least 13 hours away.  We miss so much between the months of us being apart but I can promise that we make up for it when we are together.  I am so blessed to have such an amazing family (and I'm not just saying that because they will ready this.)  Just like any family we have our moments, but I really won in the in-law game.

More to come...