'Tis the update of December

December and Christmas was a wonderful time! We had so much fun preparing, shopping, and celebrating with family!

Here are a few highlights of our Christmas Season.

We got all gussied up for Brandon's Christmas work party. It ended up being highly anti-climactic. We almost missed dinner completely, only one of Brandon's immediate co-workers was there and we ultimately killed the party when we requested a slow song during the dance party! Brandon was bummed that he didn't get to "show me off" to his work buddies (so cute huh?!) I have to admit, I was bummed too, because I felt especially cute all dressed up....but at least we got some good pictures of us out of it!

Then we were off to Colorado for a week! We stayed with Brandon's family this year, and tried to juggle seeing my family who lives 2 miles away as much as we could. We're still not used to the whole sharing families concept, but I think we did pretty good. We took almost no pictures, except this one on Christmas Eve. It was so fun to have Brandon's aunt, uncle and cousin there - and all the siblings were there by Christmas day! It was such a treat. Our typical Christmas is eating, games, talking, sleeping, and movies. It was a great break and vacation. I love being a part of Brandon's family and am grateful for how warm and welcoming they have been to me.

(I had to sneakily include my proudest present wrapping moment. Notice the nicely wrapped christmas tag! )

We brought in the New Year with my darling sister and husband Jim. We played Rock Band, cards, and had yummy snacks & treats and Martinelli's. It was so fun to be with them......and then start the new year off right with a sweet flick like Avatar in 3D on New Years Day.

We ended the season with a 4th annual Christmas party with the Peterson's (x2!).
Em and Ty were in town, and Traci and Ben kindly played fabulous hosts to our annual Christmas party. It was so fun to see my good friends and catch up and see how big their darling Dean has gotten! (Unfortunately, he didn't make it into the pic - but you can take my word for it, he is DANG cute!)

I'll post my year in review soon, but that was December. A great month! It's always a little sad when it's all over, but the sadness is quickly replaced with feelings of excitement and hope for the new upcoming year and the endless possibilities of experiences, adventures, lessons to learn, people to meet and the potential to become a better me all around!