our blue christmas.

This year will be remembered as kind of a blue christmas for us.

It’ll be the first year we are without our families. To be honest? It’s a strange feeling. Especially with my father-in-law’s condition dealing with stage IV cancer and how fast it seems to be progressing… it just sucks being across the country during one of our favorite times of the year without our families. It’s one of those lump-in-your-throat kind of feelings. Obviously we are trying not to think about ‘those kinds of things’ that are a little too dark to even say out loud right now, but it’s hard not to.

On the other hand, we are definitely trying to embrace the season as much as possible. It is both of our first times getting a fresh tree for christmas (we think it’s a blue spruce). We weren’t planning on getting one because we were so busy and thought it was going to be such a hassle, but today we last minute decided ‘let’s just freaking get one’! So we did! I am so so happy we did. It just makes our home feel so much better, especially when we have Christmas songs playing.

Shopping around for our tree today!

Our ‘blue christmas’ tree. We topped it with a white Santa’s hat and found mini stockings with our initials on them. 💙

Now THAT’S a good lookin’ group of people! If it wasn’t for these folks, Christmas would be wayy more blue than it is. Thank you for The Holmes’ for hosting and we are so grateful to have these people in our lives.

 

We couldn’t help but be a little nostalgic for the past few years during the holidays! So here’s a few random snapshots of Christmas with our families.

That one year my brother and I got our parents matching pajamas! It was so hilarious and so cute.

Some of our stockings at Michael’s parent’s house! They were always filled with so many goodies. You can kind of see the rest of the stockings in the next photo.

Michael with our adorable niece, Arya. She might be our favorite little human ever.

One year, Michael’s family gifted me a box that contained Scrabble letters that spelled out my name to add to the family wall. I’m not crying, you’re crying. This was the sweetest gesture ever. 😭

Michael’s dad, my father-in-law also AKA Santa, passing out all of the gifts!

About one year ago, we lost our Layla right before Christmas. It was awful, but seeing this photo of her always makes us so happy.

 

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month. Harlan Miller