Christmas Traditions

Any of you all who know us know that Joe and I are crazy about Christmas. We put our decorations up at the beginning of November and have anxiously awaited this season. It hasn't been exactly what we anticipated. Joe has been down for the past couple of weeks with a kidney stone that caused a surgery last Monday and a follow up one tomorrow morning. It has been hard for him to get in the Christmas spirit. I even had to drive him to the mall so he could do his Christmas shopping. Definitely not what we expected. BUT, we have tried really hard to keep up with some Christmas traditions and to make new ones for us and our family. When I was growing up, we got a new ornament each year. We made sure that we got new ornaments to represent our year ( a key for our new home, and of course, several that say "Our First Christmas"). One of my favorite Christmas traditions is getting new pjs on Christmas Eve so that we look nice for photos on Christmas morning. I made sure that we were covered on that tradition as well. Last Thursday we had tickets to Houston Ballet's Nutcracker. I don't know that we will go to the Nutcracker every year, but we'll definitely go back periodically. My favorite thing we've done together this season was something that just randomly hit me. We were out killing time before an appointment with Joe's doctor and ended up at the Painted Potter. We decided to paint a Christmas plate for us each year. This year's plate won't be ready in time for Christmas, but its super cute! I love Christmas and Christmas traditions. Traditions give so much to look forward to that make the holidays more exciting! Regardless of everything going on surrounding our Christmas season, we're excited to celebrate our first Christmas. And, we know that the coming years will bring more traditions and more excitement!