Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!  

The hubs and I are having so much fun creating the traditions that we’ll uphold once we have a family.

Sometimes I think it’s extremely important to make your relationship the first priority

and let everything else take a back seat.

I realize that is kind of controversial.

Family is hugely important to us.

This will be the first Christmas morning I haven’t woken up in my parents’ home.

It’ll be the first Christmas Mr. Husband hasn’t seen his Grandparents.

We in no way intend to keep things this way.

But with how our first few married holidays went,

we agreed that we needed a year to establish ourselves some holiday traditions of our own.

We got so swallowed up in what everyone else wanted from us.

Where everyone else wanted us to be.

We forgot to stop.  Take a second.  Breathe. And be us.

I know, especially when we have kids, we’ll be surrounded by our families.

And we both cherish that so much.

So it was incredibly important for us to take this year

for ourselves.  

For all we know, it may be the only holiday season until we’re old and grey

and our own children have their own families

that we spend just the two of us.

We miss our families.

I’ll miss walking down the stairs and insisting we take everything to my sister’s house.

I’ll miss hearing my dad’s laugh while watching Christmas Vacation.

I’ll miss sitting around my sister’s dining room table 

while her husband carves the turkey 

and my niece waits impatiently to go play with her new toys.

But holidays change as the years go by.

I was just telling Mr. Husband that our tree used to be up in the great room.

We used to have colored lights on that tree.

The tree downstairs used to be real.  That was our fancy tree.

We used to have a huge Christmas Eve party every year.

We used to be an embarrassingly large number of people around our tree.

The presents used to almost cover the entire floor.

And my dad would video tape the entire thing.

That’s how my “screw you” comment is now forever saved in the archives.

And then somewhere along the line

everything changed.

We grew up.

We have to find ways to make this version of the holidays fun.

I think we’re doing just fine.

And next year?

We’ll live within a 30 mile radius of our families.

We’ll get the best of both worlds.

So with that…

MERRY CHRISTMAS.