This Christmas was very special for our family. Why might you ask? Incase you haven’t been following us to closely:
1) Our first Christmas season in our new home.
Normally we do a grand road trip tour during the holiday season to see our family. The route typically leads us across Washington state with a couple pit stops in the middle, one being my dad’s house and the other the Halstead Family Cabin (which now belongs to another family). However, this year seemed like the perfect year to hunker down in our own beds and enjoy the glow of our own Christmas tree in our own living room. We are becoming more and more settled into the home we purchased in August and it felt wrong to leave it during Christmas. Stead strung lights outside the house and we propped up a tree we cut down in the woods right in the middle of our big living room window. We worshiped with our church family on Christmas Eve. We made ebelskivers for Christmas breakfast and eased into establishing family traditions of our own. Though we missed the fun parts of being with our extended family it was nice to not have to pack up any of Samuel’s things (he’s a bit of an over-packer – always prepared but he bogs us down with all his bags!).
2) Samuel’s first Christmas!
Though many of the holiday traditions, such as leaving out cookies for Santa and discovering stockings full of goodies in the morning, took a back seat this year it was still awesome to watch Samuel throughout the Christmas weekend. Since the little man really just loves boxes and bags we focused on playing together and making cozy memories in our living room. Sammy wore his cozy pajamas pretty much all day and tried his first ebelskiver.
We also had some special visitors Christmas day. Tim, Denise, Anna, and Rich all made their way down from Seattle in the morning and we shared a family dinner and family gift exchange in the evening. They all spoiled Samuel (obviously) as did many other family members who sent gifts a couple weeks before. He had no idea how much new stuff he had in the moment but has begun to discover them in the days following Christmas.
Side note: Samuel turned 10 months old!
Samuel’s newest accomplishments include smiling with 4 teeth, crawling, pulling himself up into standing position, bouncing along to music (especially the ABC’s), and enjoying finger foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Crazy to think that we’ve almost hit the 1 year benchmark with the little dude. Let the birthday celebration planning commence!
We hope you had an awesome holiday!