Christmas recap

I realize Christmas is over and the stores have already moved onto Valentine's Day, but I still feel like I need to document Christmas on the blog though I'm not really sure how to do that. I didn't do a very good job documenting it with pictures, and I'm not sure it is very exciting to describe the food we ate, the presents we opened and the games we played. So I just started writing, and this is what I came up with:

This Christmas was different than any other year. We weren't at my parents' house, we were at my sisters' house. It wasn't just my immediate family. It was my immediate family and my brother-in-law's family, some I'd met before, some I hadn't.

We weren't at the church I grew up in for the Christmas Eve service. Over the course of the weekend, we had all of our usual dishes, but they weren't all served on Christmas Eve. We opened presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning, my brother's dream come true.

Things were different this year, mostly because of this sweet baby girl, who has totally captured my heart.

And all of those things that were different didn't matter. I was still celebrating with my family, I still got to see the look on my siblings' faces when they opened their gifts, and I learned that any Christmas Eve service where I sing "Silent Night" by candlelight feels like home.

And I love that it was a baby that brought together two families to celebrate the birth of Christ.

I love that my family has traditions, and I have great memories of Christmases past. But I also love that we could be open to new traditions and new memories because I know this Christmas will be one we won't forget.