Welp, just like that the holidays have come and gone, and we’ve got January and February looming drearily in front of us. (Spring can’t come soon enough!) Before it gets too far past, though, I wanted to do a little recap of our holiday season.
Like usual, we spent lots of time traveling this holiday season, and while we’re always ready to get back home to our own beds and normal routine, we truly enjoyed it so much. Luke was off the whole week of Christmas, so we kicked vacation off a little early on the Friday prior and headed to New Braunfels. We left super early in the morning and stopped in Austin for breakfast (Kerbey Lane – so yummy) and a little browsing. Then we did a little wondering around a little town called Wimberley before joining my family (including the Roberts clan and Randy and Kay) at a cabin we rented just outside of New Braunfels. It was a great long weekend including a Carolina Story concert, lots of baby cousins, campfires, and of course plenty of eating and drinking. We enjoyed every second so much that I didn’t take one single picture – not even with my phone.
While the majority of the family stayed until Monday morning, Luke, Nora and I came back on Sunday evening so that we could pick Adam up from the airport that night and have a little bit of time to regroup before heading to Norman on Tuesday. We got to Norman late Tuesday afternoon and were able to stay through Christmas morning. Lacey and Ryan came in from Rhode Island, and it was the first time in a full year that all of the Matthews siblings and “out-laws” have been together. We had a good Christmas eve dinner, watched the little cousins play and open presents, and then stayed up late getting everything ready for Santa to come the next morning. (Thanks for the help, Ryan.)
On Christmas morning, we helped Nora find her cozy coupe from Santa and opened the rest of her gifts while some people slept in a bit. (That girl gets up early, and Christmas Eve was a late night, especially for the boys who stayed up past 3 putting together some type of skeleton model.) She doesn’t quite get presents this year (although she did love her new vacuum!), but judging by all her two year old cousins, next year will be a different story. Once everyone else was a awake, we finished the gift opening that we started the night before and had breakfast before it was time to pack up and go south on 35. It was a wonderful Christmas and hard to say good-bye to Lacey and Ryan who live so far away. But we can’t wait until the next time we get to see them and meet their sweet baby boy! Just over a month to go!
Once back in Texas, we headed straight to my Mom & Dad’s house where the rest of the fam was already gathered. We watched the kiddos open lots of fun gifts, did our Elfster gift exchange, ate lots of yummy soup and played Heads Up. Barring a scary incident involving a book and a newborn baby’s head (no worries – she’s totally fine), it was a perfect end to our Christmas day.
Once you have a child, it’s funny how much you start to think about creating traditions and trying to make everything special for them around Christmas (even when they’re too young to know the difference!) And I certainly began to worry about that this year, wondering how we would ever make traditions of our own if we’re never home. But then I saw several facebook posts, mostly from people around my parents age, talking about how it was just them at home on Christmas this year because all the kids had families of their own and places to be. And I imagine just like with most things involving littles, our simple Christmases when we’re all together will go far too quickly. So for now and as long as we can, I hope we can just enjoy the chaos and the travel, and teach our children that it doesn’t matter where we are as long as we’re together. Travel, and all the fun things that come along with it, can be one of our traditions.
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