This is our eighth christmas together. For our first seven Christmases together, we traveled back home on Christmas Day. Well, my friends, this year was our eighth Christmas and for the first time ever… we stayed home! And it was amazing.
Our decision was mostly fueled by the fact that I have been traveling so much for work that I was feeling burned out, so I am super thankful that our parents made the trip down to Boston to celebrate Christmas with us before and after! My parents came down a few days before and we had our Christmas with them and it was so fun! My sister and her boyfriend came down and we all had a really yummy dinner. Lily loved helping everyone open their presents! Lily and my mom made sugar cookies together and they had the best time doing it!! Steven’s family came down a few days after Christmas and it was so much fun! Lily played so hard with them, haha.
I knew that one day we would start to stay home on Christmas after we started a family of our own. So, it was kind of weird to actually make that decision this year, but it was really sweet to wake up at home (and sleep in a little bit!) with our girl! She was so excited to see all the presents under the tree and wanted to tear them open right away, haha. We stayed in our pajamas all day and we started a new tradition – making a gingerbread house! My sister bought us this kit LAST year, but we never got to it. It was a lot of fun to do as a family and we are looking forward to doing it again next year!
We only buy five gifts for Lily each year – something to wear, something to read, something she wants, something she needs, and one small item from Santa. It’s been so fun to find gifts for those categories and keeping the amount of gifts small and manageable is really important to us! On Christmas morning she got through two presents (three including the bike from my brother – which I had managed to keep hidden until Christmas!) and decided she was all done opening gifts, haha. It took her until the evening to decide to open up her other three!
Anyway, enough rambling, haha. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season together with your families! What are some of your favorite traditions?!
I’m secretly glad we never got to it last year, because Lily was pretty into the idea of helping us build it!! 
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