Our “usual” tradition is to do Christmas with the Parker’s then drive to Melbourne and actual Christmas Day becomes Christmas Eve for my mom and we wake up on the 26th and have our Christmas morning! This year things are switched up a bit as Brandon is going with Chrissy to see her family in California for Christmas so we had to push Mom’s Christmas forward and celebrate it a little early!
Zach and I drove down to Melbourne Saturday morning (we had Christmas with his Mema the night before). I’m glad we went down early because it was nice just all of us being at the house and hanging out together all day! Mom made four times the amount of Christmas Cookies as usual and we had a blast decorating them (at least I had a blast…I was told I was a control freak on how they looked but whatever! It’s my FAVORITE Christmas tradition so I’m pretty hardcore about it!)
We each have one person to decorate and one stocking…but the G.T.B (gramma-to-be) made an extra stocking for her little Clover! I got to decorate it 🙂 So cute!
Our Christmas Eve tradition is to order pizza for dinner then leave it out for Santa…we ordered two larges and were so hungry they were both gone! I’m glad we also added in going to look at Christmas lights as there is an ~awesome~ street in Satellite Beach that every house is decked out and Zach hadn’t ever gotten to see it until this year!
Christmas Eve we also exchange our Tacky PJ Presents. It’s a new tradition we added last year when Zach joined the family as we wanted to have something we all do together! I love this tradition! We draw names at Thanksgiving then find our person the tackiest pj’s that we can and they have to wear them Christmas morning!
Here’s our typical “act surprised” picture when we are first allowed to see the tree and all the presents!
I am loving the self-timer on the camera! A great family shot in all our tacky pj glory…Mom drew Brandon and got his outfit at Goodwill, I got Chrissy and since she’s a hardcore Gator of course I made her wear FSU gear, Brandon drew Mom and bought her an oriental looking outfit, and Chrissy drew Zach and got him this sexy “cougar” snow leapord get-up (and yes, he thought it was super comfy haha). Zach drew me…and he bought me a ONE piece outfit and wrote on the lines a bunch of attributes about himself. It said something like “my husband is: sexy, good speller, great driver, good listener, better looking than Brad Pitt…etc. ” Such a typical Zach thing to do…but it was mega comfortable! I actually think I’ll wear it again (although it was a pain to go to the bathroom…)
Opening gifts was so fun, as usual, and took us around 4 hours! The last gift of the morning was one Zach and Brandon had to open together…Mom and I got them each golf lessons at Sea Island and a round of golf to play together and we’re planning a family vacation (our first since we went to Tennessee when we were in like elementary school!) for this summer! I can’t wait and I know how excited the guys are too!!!
Zach and I brought each other a couple gifts to open while we were there (his part of the golf trip was from me). He went a little overboard and got me a beautiful pink freshwater pearl jewelry set and a Coach jacket!
Mom did awesome with gift buying this year, again as usual, and even while pregnant everything fit me! I was so pumped and I have so many cute clothes to wear now as well as somethings to look forward to wearing once I don’t have the belly anymore!
She got Clover a bassinet to sleep in once she/he is born! We were pumped to put it together and it’s already set up in our bedroom! It’s right next to my side of the bed and I can’t wait to have a little baby in there (we tried putting Levi in it, but he didn’t like it too much!)
It was SUCH a fun weekend! We had to leave Sunday night since Zach had work on Monday but even though it was only about 24 hours it was a great time and a very happy Christmas 🙂
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