Christmas: The Sequel

We are one week away from our second Christmas together as a married couple!

As we reach this crazy milestone, I've become more intensely aware of the fact that we are halfway, halfway, through our time in Virginia.
I...I really...I have such mixed feelings. I now truly understand the confusion between belonging to two countries at once (because yes, I consider the east coast to be a different country to the west).

On December 12th, Dusty finished his last final of the semester and we were finally able to go out and spend some time together!
This was a doozy of a finals season. We realized it may be wiser to work a little extra during the semester to avoid two full weeks of all-nighters!
On top of having no sleep, we are in a serious weight-loss competition with Dusty's brother and sister-in-law...it has been neck-in-neck, so dieting + no sleep + stress + law studies = PSYCHOTIC BREAK.
Needless to say, we needed some serious R&R after it was all said and done!

So that Wednesday night, we headed to Isabella's for a you-deserve-bread-and-cheese-and-cream-and-yummy-fats celebration dinner.

We were STUFFED. Mostly because we had been starving for two weeks straight.
Oh and Dusty has a beard now. Courtesy of finals.

On one of the previous nights, we had stolen some time together to decorate the tree in between his study times.
I had put it up a few days before, but didn't want to hang the ornaments alone. It's a big deal to me, which is probably just because of how much my dad has always loved ornaments! Us kids always had our certain ones that we would hang every year.

This year, we had a handful of brand new ornaments from our travels!

We spread out our treasures,

Put on a Christmas episode of Friends, made some hot apple cider, and got to decorating!

Last year was our very first Christmas together. We decorated our little apartment, made some fun little traditions, and even had our own mock Christmas morning to exchange gifts to each other.
In light of being halfway through law school, I have found myself reminiscing on where we were last year around this time, compared to now.

2011

2012

2011

2012

I'd say we got a little carried away with our decorations this year!

2011
Hanging our first ornament!

2012

Last year, we designated the Saturday before we left for Arizona to be our time together, our own "Christmas morning".
It was so fun!

After we made a mess of things and opened all the presents, we had a brilliant idea to have breakfast in our pajamas.
Since we didn't want to make breakfast, we headed to IHOP, pajama-clad and smiling!

This year, we kept the magic alive. But a lot has changed around the apartment!
We even had a "Christmas Eve", where we each got to open one gift.

Christmas Morning came along:

After we opened our presents, I decided to give Dusty an anniversary gift early.

I got him a vintage Guess Who game!
Not wanting to try and figure out a way to pack it and give it to him in Arizona on our actual anniversary, I gave it to him on our "Christmas morning".

Guess Who is one of the silliest and best parts of our dating relationship. For some reason, it was our favorite game to play together. And Dusty always won. 
I know it's hard to believe, but one time, we opened up the game, picked our cards, and he guessed who I had on the first try. He just yelled out a name and it was right.
Trust me. I was there.
In any case, they don't make the 1987 version anymore, so I found it used on Ebay. Now we have our very own! And we may have started a new Christmas morning Guess Who tournament tradition.
Which led to us being famished, and ready for pajama IHOP :)

We leave for Arizona in THREE days. It seems unreal that time has gone by so quickly, and that so much has changed since we first moved here.
We have invested in incredible friendships, creating lifelong relationships and fun memories. We've made our awkward apartment into a comfortable home, that's completely weird and quirky and totally us...we've grown in our relationship, loving and supporting each other in the most difficult of times. And we've gotten fat from food and happiness and silliness (thus enters the weight-loss competition).
But overall, it has been a wonderful year and a half. We are so excited to go celebrate the holidays with our families, and offer up cheers to a brand new year.
Unless the world ends on Friday.
But we'll play it by ear.

Oh yeah, and this is our apartment right now.

That's what happens when Dusty isn't in school anymore.

I don't think I've EVER been as Christmas-spirit-filled as I am this year.


In love,
Cait

family gatherings

What's better than family?

Well, OUR family. We have the best family! I'm not sure how we got so lucky, but we pretty much hit the jackpot. After adding our adorable little niece to the bunch, it has made it increasingly more difficult to be away from all of them.

Which is why our Arizona festivities were that much sweeter! After our time away (just shy of 5 months), a nice reprieve was much needed.

Splitting holiday time between families can be (honestly?) pretty horrible. Luckily for us, this year went smoothly, and everything fell into place without any hassle. We didn't have to torment ourselves over which event or house to choose, hurt feelings, or where to spend which nights and days. There were no family fights or splitting hairs, and in the end, we figured out (to further emphasize my opening statements) that our families are great. And no matter what happens, they help make things easy on us!

Greatest things about Christmastime at home:

Christmas lights!

No matter where you are, there are always great places to drive around and find vibrant displays of Christmas lights. This street in particular is NUTS. We had a lot of fun walking up and down - imagine living in a neighborhood like this! Every garage was themed and expensively decorated, and every house participated in the decked out displays. All in agreement to be fervently awesome.



Number two on the greatest-things-about-Christmastime-at-home list, is pictures.

Kodak moments abound (starting with the tree/wreath shots, which are abundant!):



A little lesser known on the photo op list, is the wrap-blinking-necklaces-around-yourselves-and-smile shot.



There are a million great things about Christmas. While Christmas in Arizona doesn't quite bring to mind drinking hot chocolate by a fireplace (although we HAVE had some cold Christmases in the past, believe it or not), there are other staples. Such as a candlelight Christmas eve service at church.

Or watching dad make caramel popcorn for the millionth time, and it's always just as magical. (I would include the recipe, but there's no way I'm giving that out to the general public. It's sacred. But I'll throw you a bone with some key ingredients.)



While this next issue can be different for everyone, one of the things that was incredible this year was going to restaurants we have REALLY missed, being on the other side of the country! Places like Mi Amigo Ricardos (REAL Mexican food), Little Sombreros, Si Senor (are you seeing a trend here?), as well as Cheesecake Factory and Old Spaghetti Factory.



Now get ready, cause it's baby time. No offense to anyone or anything, but our baby is pretty much the highlight of the world. It is SO fun to be an Aunt and Uncle for the first time, but it's a little hard to do our duties this far away! So we tried to get in as much Abby time as possible. After all, the next time we see her, she will be completely out of this stage...and into the walking/talking stages!



She is so precious. This past Summer, we spent a ton of time with Chris and Amy and little Abby. It's amazing how much she's already changed from that time to now. But it was so fun to be back with them again, and get some game-playing time in, too ;) we had many games of Catan, Dominion and Agricola! (Are we nerds, or what??)



We also got a fabulous new camera for Christmas, so hopefully you can look forward to fun new shots :)

We were really blessed to have so much time at home. I actually wasn't supposed to take off this much time off of work....but it ended up working out okay. Next year, with full vacation days and sick time, we should have a little more leeway! We felt refreshed, and even though we were pining for more time by the time we left, we got to spend a lot of quality time with our families.

Last but not least, we got to spend a very fun New Year's Eve at my parent's house. It was a great way to beckon in the new year, as well as our ONE YEAR anniversary! Hard to believe. We played games, had our annual bonfire, and dad had a giant tray of Sushi ordered (which is kind of awesome, and I think it should be a tradition!) as well as hot wings, and the caramel popcorn balls, of course!



Things got a little crazy, trying to keep the fire going BIG!! People were getting intense.... :)



We then transitioned into fireworks/poppers time!



Our ingenious picture idea:





HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! :)

In love,

Cait