Our Christmas Overview | 2021 Edition

Well – once again, Christmas has come & gone at a record pace.
Somehow, it was Thanksgiving and then I blinked & now it’s January already.

Christmas this year was completely wonderful. We spent time with all of our extended families, enjoyed mountains of gifts, ate our weight in sugary foods, and spent oodles of time just relaxing & laughing & enjoying the magic of the holidays.

I have lots of memories & thoughts & photos to share, so if you’d like to take a stroll through what our holidays looked like – here we go!

Our Christmas week kicked off with one last roller coaster riding trip (I already blogged about that here) – and then we rolled right into the usual traditional festivities!

Christmas Eve

For my entire life, we have celebrated Christmas Eve morning at Meme & Grandpa’s house. We have a big breakfast, open gifts, have a wrapping paper battle, and then eat a lunch of (mostly) cookies.

Our Christmas Eve celebration of 2020 wasn’t the greatest (to say the least). Meme was working thru a long string of heavy health battles – it was not good. As we all gathered on Christmas Eve, Meme was there – sitting at her usual place, but she wasn’t actually with us. She was slumped over, not talking or looking around, she simply was not present.
And it was heart-breaking.

Well, it’s been 365 days & Meme has made a complete 180º turnaround. As difficult as it was to make it thru Christmas Eve 2020, Christmas Eve 2021 was a completely different story.
Meme’s back to her old self – walking with a walker & repeating her stories a few more times – but she was actually present this Christmas Eve. It was such a redemptive time & felt so perfectly normal.

Words cannot express how thankful I am to have had such a wonderful Christmas Eve morning.

We came home from Meme & Grandpa’s and had our own, special, candlelit Christmas Eve dinner! Steak, shrimp, mac & cheese – it was absolutely delicious!

After dinner, we took our annual Christmas pajama photos in front of the Christmas Tree! I just love this tradition – the kids are simply bursting with excitement & I love to capture all of their hysteric happiness.
Braelynn has been old enough to understand & look forward to Christmas morning for a few years now, but this year her levels of enthusiasm seemed to reach new heights. And her joyous frenzy just spurred Leander on! He still didn’t quite know what to expect, but he knew his sister was insanely excited, so he joined right in with her!

Christmas Day

Braelynn was up bright & early at 5:18am on Christmas morning! Thankfully, she was still sleepy enough to be content to snuggle with Mommy & Daddy for a little over an hour, before she started getting super antsy! Leander loves to sleep, and we wanted him to be able to sleep as long as possible, so we made it until about 6:45am before we gave in to the excitement & went into his room to wake him up!

We started with stockings in the living room, and then moved into the dining room to open the presents under the tree!

Presents absolutely demolished – we left the kids to play with their new toys as Derrick & I made breakfast. My Mom & Dad stopped over to see everyone’s gifts & had breakfast with us! It was such a delightful morning.

Braelynn & Leander got all sorts of exciting new toys.
I gave Derrick a bunch of new roller coaster “stuff”: t-shirts, artwork, etc. But his “big” surprise was a brand new vanity license plate sporting his YouTube channel name!

Derrick gave me a bunch of chocolate and a few kitchen gadgets. He kept teasing, “But wait, there’s more!” and kept bringing out gifts that he had hidden somewhere other than under the tree.
And then, he brought out a small, wrapped box.
He made me sit in front of the Christmas Tree to open it. And he pulled out his phone to take a video.
I knew that something big was in this box. (And, I had a tiny inkling of what it might be.)
I opened it up and found a wine glass that says: “I wine when I’m not at Disney” and inside of that, was a Magic Band for Walt Disney World.

I sobbed. I simply couldn’t help myself.
I haven’t been to Walt Disney World since I worked there in 2009. We’ve talked about going back so many times, but we’ve never pulled the plug. We visited Disney Land in 2013, and after we had Braelynn, we began talking about taking her there, but it never seemed quite right.
We really wanted to go in 2020, but then the world shut down, and there went those plans.
We actually went to Florida in 2021, but after very seriously considering it, we decided that we did not want to go to Disney & have to wear masks the entire time. At the time, masks were required both indoors & out, and I told Derrick that I wanted to be able to go to Disney & see my children’s faces. So, much to my dismay, we did not visit Disney in 2021.

But 2022 is a whole new story! We’re going to Walt Disney World!!
Derrick not only bought us our tickets & made our reservations, but he also booked us an AirBnB for a week in Florida! He found a super great deal on a condo right on the edge of Disney property!

So, just in case you were curious – Derrick won Christmas. And, likely he will never top it. It was that good.
(And don’t worry, it’s all on video – you’ll be able to see me weeping in our December Abbey Archives video, which will be out soon!)

Christmas afternoon, we headed over to my parent’s house to have dinner & celebrate with my parents & siblings!
Poor Ruby (my littlest sister) had been sick all week, but was finally feeling better. She came up & sat in the kitchen – away from everyone (just in case she could still get anyone sick), but still with us. My Dad put up a gate & the kids all took turns walking over to it & talking to Ruby. It was especially hard on Leander, as “Bee-Bee” is his absolute favorite person on the planet! (You can see him at the gate talking to her in the bottom corner of this next set of photos!)

New Years

Since Christmas fell on a Saturday this year, we had to wait until the following weekend to spend Christmas with the Abbeys!
Since our families literally live on opposite ends of the state, we always split the holidays between the different sides of the family.
It’s always fun celebrating New Years with Derrick’s family as Derrick’s Dad’s birthday is January 1st! In other words, it’s just non-stop celebrating when it falls that way!

It was unseasonably warm over Christmas & New Years this year – so Papa took each of the kids on a ride around the block on his tractor!

We had such a delightful time catching up, playing games, and having fun – the long weekend flew by in the blink of an eye!

And that brought us to a new year! Happy 2022!