Our First Christmas

Jake and I had a great Christmas, even though it was a lot quieter than I'm accustomed to--having a Christmas with two people instead of 6-30 is a BIG difference!! This was my first Christmas away from home and it was hard, but it's just part of growing up and living away from home.

Christmas Eve after Jake got home from work, we put on Christmas music and made some sugar cookies. Jake wore his Santa hat (with a t-shirt and shorts, of course) and danced around the kitchen like a goofball. We delivered some of the cookies to our neighbors, and then exchanged our stockings. In Jake's, I put a toothbrush, car air fresheners, bike pump pins, Skittles, Smarties, and Sour Patch Kids, as well as a spatula (since he's the one that always makes pancakes) and some "manly" lotion. Inside mine, Jake had put a HUGE amount of chocolate...and a toothbrush (which I bought for myself when I bought his). So the image was pretty amusing: this GIANT pile of candy, and a toothbrush.

On Christmas Eve around three, it started snowing! We haven't had snow that sticks for more than a few hours in several weeks, but Christmas Eve it snowed HARD. It snowed all afternoon and evening! By Christmas morning, we had seven inches of white, fluffy, beautiful snow outside. I was so excited that we had a White Christmas!

Christmas morning we woke up and I started getting breakfast ready--some homemade sticky buns. Jake said that Christmas morning was the fastest he's ever seen me get out of bed haha! Usually he has to take the blankets away to get me to get up, but not for Christmas! 

Probably the most precious gift that I received was a very short letter from Jake, explaining that he and my mom were pitching in to fly me home in May when my best friend Carly gets home from her mission. I had been hoping to go home to see her, but over the past few months it's been looking more and more like it wouldn't happen because of our financial situation. So when I found out that it's really going to happen, I started crying. I tear up every time I think about it! I'm so excited to visit home in just a few months, and to see my best friend again after 21 months of being apart--Carly left on her mission a few weeks before Thanksgiving of 2013, so when I left for school that September we had to say goodbye.

Overall the day was a great one, and I can't wait for many more shared with my husband.