Christmas, yes Christmas, 2012

Yes, it's May. Yes, I'm just now blogging about Christmas. Please don't judge me. In case you haven't noticed, the last time I actually posted a blog was to announce Rhys's birth day! That gives you an idea of how this residency has been going. Busy, busy, busy. I try my best to spend as much of the weekend with the kids, and on the few days when they both nap at the same time, we're either cleaning, working in the yard, or sleeping ourselves! Gena has truly been truly amazing staying home with our little monsters this year, I don't know how she does it. I try to let her get out of the house alone (or leave her alone in the house) for a couple hours on the weekend, and I'm barely left standing by the time she comes back. She really is incredible. Enough gushing about her though, Mother's Day is next weekend (thanks Alison for clearing that up for me!). On to Christmas.

We started looking at flights in the fall and realized we would have to take out a 2nd mortgage on someone else's home to afford to fly home for Christmas, so we made the decision to travel in early January (cutting travel expenses by about 60%). This also meant we would be celebrating Christmas with just the four of us for the first time, AND celebrating Christmas with just US for the first time. The closer we got to the big day, the more we realized how uncharacteristically excited we were! Once we removed the stress of travel, we were like little kids looking forward to Christmas morning!


We all got dressed up on Christmas eve and took some pictures. Unfortunately, one downside of not being around family is you don't have a photographer to take a group photo. However, we got some great shots. Somehow, we failed to even get a shot of Gena with Rhys, but I think we can all agree that Rhys and I look pretty darn good together!


After the photo shoot, we went to Duke Memorial United Methodist Church for their Christmas Eve service. No, in case you're wondering, this isn't the gorgeous chapel on Duke campus, but this one was really beautiful! It's in downtown Durham, and has apparently been there for a long time (founded in 1885). The service was really nice, and Cora absolutely loved singing the Christmas music.


After the service we decided to continue a time-honored Nichols family tradition. When I was a kid, my parents were insane. I'm sure I had a hand in driving them to this point, but I digress. On Christmas Eve, my Mom would have to direct the music at services at our church in Indianapolis. Right after the last service, we would all pile in the car and drive through the night to Pennsylvania to spend Christmas morning with her family. So before heading to church in the evening, after packing up all our clothes and presents and cleaning the house, the last thing they wanted to do was cook dinner and do dishes, so they started the tradition of the Christmas Eve Pizza. So, on the way out of the service we called our local Pizza shop and ordered a pie to go. Then we killed the 30-minute wait time by driving through town looking for Christmas lights. I think this was probably Cora's favorite part of the entire holiday season. To this day, whenever we a house that still have their lights up, Cora yells "Chwismas Wiiiiiiights!" I tried to get her to say it in this video, taken post-Christmas-Eve-Pizza, but she apparently had a different favorite in mind.

The present we allowed each of them to open early was a tradition taken from Gena's side of the family. Her Uncle Mark and their family each open Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve, then wear them to open presents on Christmas morning. You may remember we did that last year with Cora, and we thought it was fun, so we did it again this year. Here is a nice collage of our almost successful attempt to get a good photo of Cora and Rhys in their brand new Christmas pajamas.

The next morning, I was actually up before both kids (they're not old enough to wake us up for Christmas yet...we're cherishing the grace period!), so I came downstairs and made some espresso for the adults. Rhys woke up as we were enjoying our quiet lattes, so Gena woke Cora and came downstairs so we could capture her reaction on video.

Our first Christmas on our own was a huge success. The kids were great, we were relaxed and stress-free, and a few weeks later, we had a great trip to TX to celebrate Christmas with Gena's family a few weeks late. Here are a couple more of our favorite pictures.

Rhys is awake, so I'm cutting this short. Maybe in 3 or 4 more months, I'll blog about our Texas Christmas in January. We love you all, and I hope this "Holiday Season" finds you happy!