I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Jimmy and I both felt incredibly blessed to spend time with our families and each other all weekend.

Our celebration started on Friday. I was off work and Jimmy had a half day, which I didn’t know because he wanted to surprise me. He came home after lunch time and accidentally scared me. He just walked in the house and I was 100% sure I was going to be killed by someone breaking in.

Once my heart stopped pounding I got to work on making a dessert for the various celebrations we were going to over the weekend. Oreo cheesecake bites!

I prepared a special Christmas dinner for us in the evening. We knew we would be busy with family on Saturday and Sunday, so we decided to have an evening in where we could relax, reflect on Christ’s birth, and enjoy each other’s company.

After dinner, we took turns reading Christ’s birth story from the beginning of Matthew and Luke and marveled at it for a bit afterwards.

We enjoyed leftover cookies for dessert and then rented Storks, which was such a cute movie! I definitely recommend it. Man do I love a good kids movie 🙂

Saturday was spent with Jimmy’s mom and boyfriend, going to church in the evening, and then going to my father-in-law’s for dinner after church.

The Christmas Eve church service was absolutely beautiful. I tried to savor every moment of it. The young kids in the church sang, and a few men (including my brother and Hannah’s fiancé!) gave a message to the congregation.

Jimmy’s grandpa, brother and sister (plus her boyfriend), and my father-in-law’s girlfriend went to my FIL’s for dinner. We all hung out, laughed, and exchanged gifts late into the evening. Since Jimmy and I have been together since 2008, I feel like his siblings are my siblings. We kind of grew up together 🙂

Jimmy and I went to church on Christmas morning and then spent time at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. They have a big gathering with Racquel’s extended family and my family each year.

One of Racquel’s family members is a chef, so the food was very gourmet and such a treat. The company was even better!

I’m usually the designated photographer at family gatherings, which I adore! How cute are my brother and his wife? I just love them so much. Their dogs are the sweetest, too.

Jimmy and I headed back to church in the evening to teach the preschool kids and we only had one child in our class. We had a blast with him and even let him paint after the lesson since he was being so good!

All in all it was a lovely and very blessed Christmas!