Christmas 2012

This Christmas was definitely one full of memories.  All of the Christmastime activities have been so much more fun this year since I've been able to share them all with David.  December was full of parties and events and the beginning of wedding planning!

Here's a little rundown of the past week of Christmas fun

Friday the 21 was my last day of work for 2012.  We had 1 evaluation and then were at the office the rest of the day.  It was nice to get caught up on paperwork and leave feeling ready to take on another year.  I also may have done a little bit of figuring out wedding details and I was able to book sites for our ceremony and reception so we have an official wedding date!  It's nice to be able to answer the question of "when" since that's the first thing people ask from the day you get engaged.

Last Saturday,  we met my mom, brother and Aunts for lunch for our Reed family "Christmas."  It was supposed to be with the whole family, but my grandfather was not feeling well enough to come up to Dallas, so it was just a small crew.  But still nice to catch up with everyone

Sunday we had church and a meeting, then we spent the afternoon relaxing and wrapping gifts.  We knew the rest of the week would be crazy, so we took it pretty easy that day.

Monday I headed with David and his sister their parents' house for Christmas Eve.  We had an early dinner and then I went to church with them.  Afterward we exchanged a few gifts and spent time at the house.  It was the first Christmas Eve as long as I can remember that I did not spend at my home church--which felt a little weird, but I really enjoyed getting to spend it with my new family :)

We decided to spend Christmas Day with our own families, so Tuesday I headed over to mom's house.  We had breakfast and then opened gifts.  My nephew is at a fun age where he is understanding the idea of opening presents and he liked unwrapping things... but we also had several distractions of snack time, attempted nap times, playing with toys and snow--so overall it took us about 4 hours to open all the gifts.  It was the first time Chase had ever seen snow and he was mesmerized to look out the window and point to it for all of us to see.  We ended up heading home early, right after dinner, in case the roads got bad (which they really didn't)

Wednesday morning David picked me up and we headed up to Oklahoma to visit his extended family.  We didn't know what to expect on the roads, but they weren't icy at all.  Even without the ice, people were being super cautious (a nice way to say slow), so the usual 3.5 hour trip took us about 6 hours.  But we enjoyed the time in the car together and had some good conversations, including answering questions from these books my mom bought us for christmas--they were full of fun and silly questions for us to answer.  When we got to his Grandma's house I was able to meet his aunts, uncles and cousins and then we had dinner together.  We stayed there through Friday and were able to enjoy playing games with his grandma, eating lots of good food, a visit to the OU campus, dinner with David's best friend and his wife, and watching Baylor in the Holiday Bowl.  It was a nice time to get away and meet his family.

Saturday we headed to East Texas for a visit with my family.  Since my Grandpa wasn't able to come up for Christmas, we wanted to make a trip to see him.  We spent the afternoon visiting and David was able to meet my Grandpa and my Aunt and Uncle.  It was a quick trip, but nice to see them for a while.

And now I am thoroughly enjoying being back at home and having very little on the schedule (other than New Years Party) before I go back to work on Wednesday!