I don’t write very many strictly personal blog posts like I used to. Once upon a time, I blogged about my personal life A LOT because, well, it was the only thing I had to blog about! I was building a business, but didn’t have a lot of it to show off, so I took photos and wrote about my life.
Well, things have changed (a lot) over the last 10+ years and now I only share a handful of personal blog posts here and there. My blog is now mainly fueled by my work as a photographer and content creator (both in the wedding world and amusement park world – shameless plug: go subscribe to my YouTube channel).
But whenever certain holidays roll around, I find myself yearning to dive back into that personal blogging realm to share a small peak into our “real” lives.
So, without further ado, here is a small peak into our Christmas!
PRE-CHRISTMAS
For Christmas 2025, we all (finally) gave in to an idea that my Mom has been pitching for years and agreed to do a “Secret Santa” between my parents, my siblings, and their spouses. We originally were going to include the kids too, but then ultimately decided to simply include the adults – and we’d leave the kids to enjoy “traditional” Christmas (meaning, my parents would still buy their grandkids gifts and if anyone else wanted to buy their nieces and nephews gifts, they were free to, but not obligated to).
Because my brother and his wife would be traveling on Christmas Day, we decided to gather the Sunday before Christmas to do our big gift exchange.
I have to admit: we were all very skeptical of doing Christmas this way. Ever since we were young kids, my siblings and I have always bought each other gifts (the original tradition was that everyone would gather on my bed on Christmas morning, before Mom and Dad got up, to exchange our “sibling gifts”), so changing it up was difficult to process. BUT, as we’ve all gotten older (and most of us are married now), buying gifts for everyone can definitely be a challenge (not to mention that it’s pretty expensive).
So, as skeptical as we all were, I must admit: I (personally) LOVED the end result. Everyone took turns handing out the gifts they bought and we all opened things one-at-a-time. Everyone received really wonderful, thoughtful, fabulous gifts (mostly because, it’s so much easier to buy for just one or two people, than eleven!) and the whole process was just so relaxed and so much fun.
So that the kids wouldn’t be left out, the aunts and uncles gave them their gifts this night – with Grandma and Grandpa holding off their gifts until Christmas Day.
CHRISTMAS EVE
As usual, Christmas Eve morning was spent piling into Meme’s house for breakfast. Every year, the crowd gets bigger and Meme’s house seems to shrink a little bit – but somehow, we still managed to find a space for 38 people (okay, I guess we were missing 1 or 2 people who had to work, but that’s a close number) to gather together.
We ate delicious food, exchanged gifts, and ended our morning with our “traditional” (epic) wrapping paper snowball fight.
ADDITIONALLY: we played a few games inspired by Instagram – we had all the guys put gift bags on their heads and asked them to remove items on their bodies that they did not wear to bed the previous night (this was A RIOT). And then one-by-one everyone snuck into Meme’s closet and came back out wearing an item of her clothing – to see how long we could go until she noticed. When Zeb came out wearing the dress Meme wore for his and Emilie’s wedding, I think we all peed our pants from laughing so hard.
As we came home and got ready to go to church for Christmas Eve, the kids were sweet enough to let me take a few photos of them in front of the Christmas Tree. (This is a tradition I’m determined to keep at – it was much easier when I had an Abby’s Saturday photo to take!)
After church, we came home to dinner in the crockpot (eaten by candlelight), unwrapping our last Christmas book of the season (‘Twas The Night Before Christmas), the kids exchanging their gifts to each other, and our annual Christmas pajamas under the Christmas Tree photos!
AND I do believe we might have started a NEW Christmas Eve tradition: we made up a “charcuterie board” of Christmas cookies and ate them in the living room while watching Star Wars.
CHRISTMAS DAY
As usual, our kids were up BRIGHT and EARLY (Leander actually must have been thinking about it last week because he said: “Why did we open presents in the dark? Why wasn’t the sun up yet?” Because the little monsters were up before 6am!!
We’ve come to expect the early wake-up call though and don’t mind it at all.
We once again re-arranged the dining room to accommodate a couch from the living room and had a very wonderful time of exchanging gifts.
Right after we ate breakfast, Braelynn lost a tooth!
We went back over to my parents for Christmas dinner – Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids their gifts and we had a really wonderfully relaxed time of eating and playing games and simply enjoying being together.
CHRISTMAS WEEK
If you couldn’t tell, the kids got TONS of Legos for Christmas, and boy did they go to town with them in the days following. They built every single set they got – which ranged from Jurassic Park to Ninjago to Star Wars. They were constantly building (and Leander actually got REALLY good at building sets on his own!) and it was hilarious to see their Lego collections grow and grow.
Otherwise, the week was spent relaxing, eating delicious food, and enjoying the time off (Derrick was off 5 days starting on Christmas Eve, so it was the most delightful mini-at-home-vacation!)
And THEN, as a bonus-after-Christmas surprise, Derrick pulled out his box of Star Wars toys from the attic and gave them to the kids! Leander especially has been VERY obsessed with Star Wars over the last few weeks (we’ve watched all the movies, except the newest trilogy, and he is head-over-heels into it), so they went absolutely bonkers to be given all of Daddy’s old toys!
NEW YEAR’S EVE
On New Year’s Eve, Derrick’s brother was able to come and visit for the evening. The kids were over-the-moon excited to see their cousins and had the best time being together.
And now, we’re just trying to get back to our regularly scheduled programming! With Christmas and New Years falling in the middle of each week, our time “off” has definitely been a little wonky. All of our schedules have gotten completely thrown to the wind, so this week has been a time of trying to get everything back on track (including the laundry – yikes).
Happy New Year!
