It's a Holly-Jolly Christmas

Scott and I have decided that it's difficult to approximate the Christmas traditions of childhood when it's only the two of you - which makes for a rather stark, sometimes-odd, and unusually short Christmas morning. We definitely recognize that the "fun" of having children around this Christmas season was missed, however, it was still not enough of an excuse to drive us toward procreation.....or adoption.....yet.....sorry, family. Despite the lack of presents, Scott and I were able to find ways to invite the Christmas spirit in to our lives. Again this year, like last year, we adopted a family that wasn't able to provide presents for their children - two girls ages 6 and 8. We had little information to go on, other than that the older girl loved Hannah Montana and High School Musical; while the younger loved Disney Princesses. We had fun shopping for the girls, and despite my inherent general distaste for all things HM and HSM-related, I put my own feelings aside and went to work. Both girls got two cute outfits, one nicer, and one casual - Scott was a 'good sport' about shopping for girl-clothes, and generally deferred to my judgment. But we both scratched our heads when we got to the toy aisles - apparently it has been too long for me since I was a 6 or 8-year old girl, and never, for Scott - but we muddled through. We also got each girl a backpack, socks, hair accessories, and a toy; needless to say, we had a lot of fun, and we were so happy we could make a child's Christmas enjoyable.

For ourselves, we decided to keep things low-key. We enjoyed having Scott's family over to our place to celebrate Christmas Eve....another one of the three or four-yearly excuses for me to bust-out my culinary skills: ham, rolls, sweet potatoes, salad (a recipe we recreated from the Cheesecake Factory), and all the accumulated Christmas treats. Me, Scott, Scott's parents, and his sister, Jen, enjoyed reminiscing about Christmases past and sharing thoughts about the birth of Jesus Christ - it is unfortunate that we often have to wait until the Christmas season to verbally express our love for the Savior.

On Christmas morning, we woke up late - to be honest, sleeping in was a nice gift to ourselves. We exchanged a few simple gifts and then I surprised Scott with a mutually-beneficial gift: a Blu-Ray player. We spent a few hours testing out how it worked - we've never seen Sleeping Beauty look so amazing before. Finally, we joined Scott's family at their home, and opened a few more gifts. Scott's parents got us a few fun gifts, including gift cards to some of our most-frequented local restaurants.

Scott opens a few presents.

Sara displays a new kitchen gadget.
After a while, Christmas prep takes a toll on everyone. We did, however, enjoy the Christmas-dinner fiesta that Mom prepared for us, and our satisfied tummies jiggled with laughter as we watched Mr. Bean's Christmas, a Hinckley family tradition. It was a wonderful holiday!