Christmas 2021 in VH

Yay for experiencing the magic of Christmas today again! It's time to catch up on our past Christmas 2021.

We were so super excited to send out our first Christmas card ever! The previous year, Christmas was a few short weeks after our small wedding ceremony, so Christmas card sending just wasn't one of our priorities. We're so happy with how our first one turned out this past year though!

I have to give all the credit to Shane, as far as the vision and decorating of our front porch. 

He has white lights on the garland around our posts, which looks so pretty at night!

Shane gets really into decorating for Christmas. He always says he wants it to look like "Christmas threw up all over our house", and I'm totally on board with that.

My mom made those stockings for C&C, and I think they're just the cutest things. She's working on making me and Shane stockings for our house (although she has ones made for us at her house!) now that we're at the stage where we appreciate sentimental things like that as opposed to just wanting seasonal decor that exactly matches other stuff we have. 

My small Christmas tree that used to be in my apartment is perfect for our bedroom. This was before we actually decorated it, although our decorating of both trees was very minimal this year due to the dogs loving to get ahold of ornaments when we're gone.

We are intentional about setting up cozy, festive Christmas vibes in our house!

Shane likes to decorate our headboard for every holiday too, and I sure have no complaints about that!

There is a big driving/walking Christmas light show right by where we live, so we made sure to load up the dogs and visit it for the first time this year. 

Looking at this just gets me so calm and peaceful! (FYI- the garland Shane temporarily put on the mirror didn't last there.) Please always ignore our beige curtains on our beige wall. We rent our house and those curtains/wall colors came with the house, so it just is what it is for right now!

And then it was time to hop in the car again for another long drive to Vernon Hills to celebrate Christmas with my family!

We went to Aunt Sue's to celebrate! 

The puppies got a few Christmas toys from Aunt Sue, of course.

Ever since I can remember, my mom makes my Grandma and Dad calendars with pics for Christmas. This was the first time we got to look at Grandma's for the first time with her!

And then it was already Christmas Eve and we all opened up our one gift, per tradition!

Merry Christmas day! We always get up, have a big breakfast that my mom makes (sometimes this happens after opening some presents), open or finish opening all the presents and then open our stockings.

Brian is always the sorter of gifts. We always start with the youngest first! Shane has claimed my glory for that...

Cash was not happy that he had to wait a little bit longer for a walk. Can ya tell?

This is the story of my life as a dog mom.

My dad will not admit it but he loves C&C and he amazes us by sometimes taking care of them now, petting them, talking to them, taking pics of them, and asking about them every day. Many of you know this is a big deal for him!

Cash loves Cherry so much!

Look at that cute baby bump!

Crowding around my dad to check out his calendar

The excitement of Christmas AM is so special...even at this somewhat awkward in-between stage for us. 

Brian and Bridget publicly announced their pregnancy- the first grandbaby/nephew in our family!

Before Christmas day, my dad and I did our yearly tradition of going shopping together right before Christmas. This is his very favorite thing to do, and it's so special for me too. It always works out because as he says "One gift for Mom, one for Jennifer, one for Dad, one for Jennifer, one for Brian, one for Jennifer". He uses my help to pick out gifts for my mom, and he loves to spoil me during this time too.

We stopped at Starbucks and got coffee for those at home. I couldn't resist trying the Sugar Cookie Latte. 

Poor Cash gets so terrorized by us loving on him...his face says it all. He wants to be right NEXT to us 24/7 but (forced) cuddling is not his thing. 

This is typically what it looks like whenever we are at home! Board game, tv/movie, video games, just hanging out and enjoying being together!

Please note my dad's "fraternity tree" I call it. He loves to decorate it for Christmas down there where he spends most of his time hanging out, and I constantly call him out for it looking like a frat house.

My mom has their cats upstairs behind a baby gate because of the dogs. Zoomer, one of the cats, loves to look at Caylor, and Caylor. is. obsessed. at staring at him. She will spend 99% of her time, fighting sleep, simply just staring at him as he stares at her. 

I'm jumping all around here, but later on Christmas day, we headed to our family friends' house like we do for every holiday. We love going to the Earhart's! 

There are tons of pics here, so I'm just going to let most of the pics do the talking!

Don't mind the hanging Shrek on the Christmas tree. The Earharts are super quirky and that's one of their longstanding traditions... A family of all boys and a super creative mom will do that!

Remember what I said about them being quirky? Mrs. Earhart sets a theme for each year and does creative games/gifts along with that theme. She's an early childhood educator.

This year, the theme was...pickles. 

One of our classic traditions with the Earharts is going bowling. Brian and Bridget got Michael his first bowling set because of that.

Michael loves his godfather!

We always end our evenings with board games (or a digital drawing game this time) that always have us crying laughing and running to the bathroom from laughing so hard. These are some of my favorite memories! We also get super intense and competitive.

Before we knew it, it was time to head back to North Carolina. As soon as we start packing up our bags, the dogs panic and block the door to make sure that we don't forget about them.

Off we went! The time at home always goes too quickly these days.

Merriest Christmas to you all, just a tad bit late! Hope this helped you to reminisce on the magic of your own season that happened.