Christmas in Nebraska

Before we left for our week long Christmas adventure in freezing Nebraska, we did a few things around the local area. Last year Hutson was only a month old so it was fun to introduce him to the Christmas festivities and start some of our Christmas traditions.

We went to downtown McKinney.

Everyone has to have their screaming Santa picture, Hutson included.

 

Of course, he wasn't scared of mean 'ole green Grinch. That's our Hutson for ya.

 

All dressed up at our ward Christmas party.

Grant's Aunt Nancy lives up near Omaha, NE. Her kids and all the Joyner's joined together for a memorable week of Christmas. My in laws have a 40 ft RV that we were going to drive up in, but decided due to the unknown with the weather that we would end up driving up there and stay in a hotel for the week. We (mostly me) were worried what it would be like driving ten hours with a one year old. With numerous requests for advice and prayers, Hutson did very well! On the drive there he slept most the morning and ended up watching Despicable Me about three times while in and out of a couple cat naps. I was totally ANTI entertaining my children with technology, but desperate times come for desperate measures and it worked out great! I also was panicking because Hutson (mostly myself) are on a schedule. We have a certain way to do mornings and an even more certain way we do bedtime. How was I going to do this while sharing a hotel room with four other people and not actually get back to the hotel for three or more hours after his normal bedtime?! I just had to go with the flow and considering there were three other cousins for Hutson to play with, there was no way he would have allowed bedtime to have been around the normal 7:30pm. I learned to let it go, and was blessed when we returned from a crazy week with Hutson stepping right back into his routine (for the most part).

It was really nice to spend time with Grant's family whom we don't get to see too often. I come from a family where holidays mean time in the kitchen telling stories, making food, and eating way too many sweets. It was so nice to have just that. Most of the week was spent talking with one another, watching Christmas movies, and eating way too much delicious food.

Christmas is always different for me considering Grant's family does Christmas so much different than I grew up with (I'm sure I'm not the only one that married into different traditions). We would always get new pajamas Christmas Eve. We read the nativity story out of the Bible and go to bed. The first person up Christmas morning has to wake up everyone else. Once everyone is awake we go to the family room where all the presents are and separate presents amongst ourselves. We open our presents. The middle of the room is a mess with ribbon, bags, wrapping paper all over the place. We show off our presents, eat our traditional breakfast casserole, and spend the rest of the day with one another until Christmas dinner. All of our Christmas morning pictures show us with crazy bedhead hair and groggy faces. Grant's family always gets up for the day, gets dressed, has their traditional breakfast, separates presents amongst themselves, then goes in a circle opening one present at a time. Its a much longer celebration, but it is nice to have another way of Christmas celebration.

This year for Christmas was nothing less of a crazy hectic Christmas day with things never going the way they were planned, but lots of memories made. Brunch was planned for 10am, but of course we didn't end up eating 'til 11. It was their traditional eggs with shrimp sauce, grits and cheese, with delicious muffins (a Joyner tradition). The opening of presents didn't start 'til around 1 or so. It was so much fun opening presents with so much family around. It was quite an event considering there were so many presents to open. This year I decided to do homemade gifts considering we were really tight on money. I noticed this time around, I was so much more anxious for everyone else to open their presents than I was to open mine. I was blessed with great in laws who always know me so well when it comes to gifts (a brand new KitchenAid mixer!!!), and a husband who buys me exactly what I want each year (a bigger Coach bag so I can forgo the monster diaper bag).

It was such a blessing to have a week off work to spend wit this handsome boy.

Hutson loved playing with other kids.

 

The day after Christmas we went to the Omaha zoo, which was incredibly impressive. It was so nice to spend the week with family. It is such a blessing to have married into such great people who are so Christ-like in their love for family and making time for one another. No one is perfect, we each have our flaws, but it is nice to come together.