the one before, during & after christmas.

merry belated christmas everyone! this christmas has been wonderful. santa was way too good to me and my siblings. i saw a lot of family. we were happy. it was a wonderful way to celebrate the birth of our savior.

i don't really have an outrageous family story (that would be funny or interesting to you anyways) so i thought i would just do a run down of the past couple of days.

before christmas. insane hectic schedules. wrapping paper everywhere. ryan's basketball games dictating our nights. last minute shopping. tape stuck to your shirt. missing gifts hidden underneath boxes, bags and ribbon. fingers crossed for a white christmas. text messages every second to figure out dates with your high school friends. lots of sleep. figuring out last minutes gifts. finishing projects. lots of smiles.. because it's almost christmas!!

side-note: i am not that crafty. there are a few things i can arrange to appear nice, but with all honesty, i can't even draw a straight line with a ruler. so crafty, homemade gifts were of course an idea, but ideas that only lasted a couple minutes when i face reality. reality that i could only get so far in my projects to the point... where i need my mom or sister to finish. but anyways i was stumbling upon different blogs and i found an idea from a wedding. but i wanted to take the idea and turn it into a cute christmas gift for my sister. so then not only did it become a potential gift but a challenge to make a handmade, crafty gift without her help. so with the help of netflick movies on my laptop (especially notting hill), i got crafty...

this is the preview to my finish product. i'll do a how-to post tomorrow! :)

on christmas eve also came exchanging of gifts with my mom's side of the family (the twice new people). it was a total hit! i probably think this because i came out with the best gift in my opinion, my cousin got me a really old polaroid camera set. (i took pictures with my uncles camera so i don't have them to post :(... ). but it was amazing. it came with the camera, an attachable flash, extra bulbs for the flash, an attachable self timer, instructions, the case. incredible. i absolutely love it. it will fit ever so nicely in my collection of antique cameras. :) thanks mark, gina, mallorie & mark!

as mom & dad settled into bed and my brother got on xbox with all his buds, my sister & i baked santa some cookies. we always leave santa cookies regardless of us being 16,19, & 22. while the cookies were baking ashley & i decided to be productive and clean the house so everyone would wake up to clean house before the explosion of wrapping paper that was going to occur in a couple of hours.

right before we headed to bed, i thought we should show santa and mrs. claus our appreciation by writing them a little note on an index card. ashley and i got all sappy and traditional, and ryan (aka comedian of the family) simply said this:

yes, he writes like a 5th grader... but we laughed sooo hard at his sentimental words.

by now it's christmas. we all nestled our heads in our cold pillows and drifted off dreaming of sugar plums. to awake to way too many boxes of really awesome goodies!

we had an amazing christmas morning.. even though mom had to go into work (hence the dark out.. we did santa at 4:30am!!!) but we got all more than expected & necessary. santa and mrs. claus always outdo themselves and never, EVER disappoint.

one thing that was a little frustrating, but understandable, but still frustrating was not spending the day with sam. usually we do lunch at my grandma's, then supper at his. but low and behold we got our white christmas (yay!... kind of) so the mass amount of flakes changed both of our schedules to around 3 or 4pm. so sam treked his way over to my house and we had our 45 minutes of exchanging (p.s. i got cowboy boots from sam, who knew?) and then said our goodbyes for the end of our christmas together. sad face times ten.

overall, christmas was comfortable. it was real. and it was nice. conflicts happen even on the happiest day of the year. we deal with them and enjoy the people we get to spend the day with. i embraced the fact that my family is healthy, happy and just down right beautiful. :)

after christmas. like i said. we got our white christmas and it was amazing! my family got to wake up this this:

God is so gorgeous.

so inches of snow on the ground.. what does that mean? it means ignoring the explosion of wrapping paper that has yet to be cleaned up. it means throwing on your snow gear. it means teaching your dad how to use a camera so he can take action pics as his kids make packed pathways and snow jumps.

it means enjoying your family. it means reminding yourself that you love them more than you can believe in spite on their differences or disagreements. it means being thankful for classy white snow, and the beauty it shows as it lays perfectly on a pond's pier, or on top of a mountain. & it's a perfect reminder of why we celebrate this season in the first place. :)

hope your christmas season rocked your snow-drenched socks off!

(my how-to crafty gift post is coming tomorrow, get pumped!)