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December is a big month in the Abbey house!
Not only is December the month of holiday celebrations with Christmas & New Years, but there is all the prep that goes into the holidays: shopping, wrapping presents, baking cookies, watching Christmas movies, decorating the tree, looking at Christmas lights – trying oh-so-hard to soak in every last second of Christmas magic before the clock strikes midnight & we enter a new year.
But that’s not all! We officially kick off the month of December with Leander’s birthday!! Our sweet boy turned three years old & we celebrated by going to Kennywood with Grandma, Auntie Ruby, Auntie Ellen, Uncle Jonathan, Alethea, and Layla. It was SUCH a fun night! (We continued celebrating & had a big Mickey Mouse birthday party for him the next day – that event has it’s own video, go watch it here: https://youtu.be/HKOyy05gbBg)
After Leander’s birthday, the month flew by in a literal blur. I’m still in shock that December & Christmas & 2021 are over! But look out 2022 – big things are in store & I am so excited!
AND – with the completion of this video, that means that I’ve officially created an ENTIRE YEAR of Abbey Archive videos!! What an INCREDIBLE project this has been – video evidence of our entire amazing year. (And now, all I want to do is sit down & watch them back-to-back, like a feature-length film.)
When I started this “project”, I had no idea what it would turn into, I just knew that I needed a dedicated space to preserve our home videos. And it has blossomed & grown into a new business idea (COMING SOON) & so many more fun things!! The act of sitting down & creating a video of our daily family life every single month has quickly turned into one of my favorite things to do. I TREASURE these videos & absolutely love the memories I’ve stored up here.
You know I can’t stop – I’m 100% addicted and will continue creating these films as we enter into 2022! Life moves too fast & the best way I know to preserve it is to snatch these fleeting moments before they fly away & bottle them up so they are never lost.
Moments of note this month:
(0:41) Braelynn sings Happy Birthday to Leander
(0:47) We go to Kennywood for Leander’s birthday (our last visit to Kennywood for the year!)
(1:24) We decorate our Christmas Tree
(2:33) Gingerbread Houses at Grandma’s house
(4:37) Santa rides by our house on a firetruck!
(5:48) Derrick’s magic trick
(7:21) Amy & Nathan announce that they’re having a BOY!
(7:33) Christmas Eve
(9:18) Putting out cookies for Santa
(9:52) Christmas Day
(13:00) Derrick gives me the BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER (I cried, and I cry every time I watch this back, and I’m crying writing this – SO good)
(17:18) Happy New Year!
What would a month be without a trip to ride roller coasters? We have annual passes to the Busch Gardens parks & the Cedar Fair parks, so we decided to take an extended weekend trip down to Virginia to check out Busch Gardens Christmas Town event & Kings Dominions Winterfest! You can watch the vlog from that trip here: https://youtu.be/VDlkF6Gr3Y4
Just in case you missed what I’m doing – I decided that I wanted to create a curated “home video” for our family every month (remember those old “home movies” our families used to create? with the giant video recorders that an entire VHS tape fit in?) Those videos were fantastic, but if you’ve ever sat down to watch one (does anyone even own a VHS player anymore?) you very quickly realize that you do a lot of “fast-forwarding”.
So, my goal, is to take all the little videos I take of our family over the course of a month & create a short (my goal is to be around 10 minutes) video of my favorite snippets. I am SO excited to finally have a dedicated place to chronicle my family videos & keep them safe & accessible.
Enjoy a little peek into what our December looked like!
PS: don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel while you’re at it!
