Spending some time reflecting on our holiday season this year. Here’s a little 2022 holiday recap for you. I think it’s fun to hear about everyone’s family holiday traditions. It’s always been a challenge for us to navigate balancing all of our families – between my mom’s side, my dad’s side, and my husband’s family – our calendars can fill up quickly! 

I should explain our holiday traditions by pre-Texas move and post-Texas move. 

Pre-Texas Move Holidays

Pre-Texas, we generally did Thanksgiving with Bryan’s family – a whole day thing. We had a few years where we tried to hit two Thanksgiving dinners in one day and that was always such a nightmare. We stopped doing that after Ben’s first Thanksgiving. 

For Christmas, the last few years, we would spend Christmas Eve with Bryan’s family and then Christmas Day at our own house. My parents would stop over at some point during the day. During a different weekend in December we would celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. We just worked around everyone’s work schedules. My mom usually likes to go all out – matching pajamas for the whole family, an entire weekend at her house with lots of food and games. 

We aren’t really big New Year’s Eve festivities kind of people. Since having kids it’s been a pretty chill holiday for us. That’s looked like a nice dinner with friends or my sisters, wine at home and maybe staying up until midnight.

Post-Texas Move Holidays

So now, we have had our first Post-Texas move holiday season. In general, the holidays were very low key compared to our normal. That part was nice for sure but it was definitely bittersweet to miss out on the bigger family gatherings! 

Thanksgiving weekend happened this year right after our move. My mom was in town. So we had a big traditional meal with her, us, and my friend (who I work with) and her husband. I think for the next few years, while our kids are small we will continue to stay in Texas for Thanksgiving. I expect that most years it will just be the four of us, maybe with our friends if they are in town as well. Once our kids are older, and/or our parents are older – I could see us wanting to make it back to Michigan for the long weekend. So that is a TBD honestly. 

Christmas this year was also obviously much different. We missed out on all the gatherings I mentioned above. On Christmas Eve my dad and stepmom and youngest sister came into town. It was awesome to have some family in Texas! We spent all of Christmas day at home. Ben and Noah spent a large chunk of the morning (read 4 hours), opening presents from all the grandparents and from us and Santa. I think the mail people must have hated our address this past month – we had so many packages from grandparents and family. We had a great time but I definitely missed seeing all of our family in person.

We had a nice meal on Christmas Day and then the week after Christmas we spent time with our family in town. The extra quality time was nice! We even spent a day working on a few small projects around our house – replacing the kitchen faucet and putting together some extra storage in our playroom.

There are few holiday traditions that I’ve started with the boys that I am excited to continue over the years. I don’t plan on us incorporating any travel into our Christmas plans going forward. As much as I missed not seeing family, I just don’t want to be a part of the mad travel rush this time of year. So, it’s really important to me that we have some traditions to make the holidays special for the boys – especially if there are years when it’s just the four of us.

Holiday Traditions

Matching pajamas! To kick off the holiday season, I started giving the boys matching Christmas pajamas the weekend of Thanksgiving. We wear the pajamas while putting out all of our holiday decorations. It’s so fun to switch gears right after Thanksgiving and get in the holiday spirit.

Christmas books! About two weeks prior to Christmas, I started giving the boys a new Christmas book each night before bed. Our kids love their books and reading to them during their bedtime routine is my favorite. Ben was so excited every night when we had a new Christmas book to read!

Presents for each other! This year I took Ben shopping and he helped me pick out a few presents for Noah. They ended up being Noah’s absolute favorite things on Christmas morning. I want to continue doing this every year as they both get older. I think it will help reinforce the giving spirit of Christmas to them.

Visit a new holiday place in our area! We took the boys to one of the Holy Grail’s of Christmas in the DFW area this year (The Gaylord Texan Resort). Honestly, it ended up being kind of a fail – pretty crowded and the parking / shuttle situation was weird – but I like the idea of trying something new every year. There are so many opportunities to see Santa and lights and decorations in our area – I want to make sure we are taking advantage of that.

Adopt-A-Family! Full disclosure, we didn’t do this this year. But next year, and going forward I want to find someway to get involved with helping a family in our community. I want our kids to learn the importance of helping others and this seems like the perfect way to do it.

What are your holiday traditions that you love? Any ideas for us? Comment below!

New Year’s Eve 2022

This New Year’s Eve was extremely low key for us. We stayed home, just the four of us. We watched football and played outside. Bryan and I spent the evening talking about some of our goals and aspirations for the year ahead. We are excited to see what 2023 has in store for us. I know for sure I’m ready to be in one place for the year. I’m glad 2022 with all of it’s transitions is behind us now!

Happy New Year to you! As always, thanks for being here with me! Celebrating my 30th blog post today with this entry. Feels pretty amazing to hit that milestone.

Please drop your email below if you haven’t subscribed to my email list! I’m excited to see what the next 30 posts look like in this space!