early Christmas

this past weekend, we had Christmas early.
i always love having Christmas early--it's something i've always grown up doing.
with families out of town, we always got to have our immediate family's Christmases early,
so we were fortunate to open gifts early and then do our best to keep things a little hush-hush because we wanted to help keep the excitement for everyone else who was waiting for the 25th.

got to see my siblings and their spouses (and their dogs),
got to play games together (congrats on the tie d.g. :) )
and see who had who for our present exchange.

there were lots of laughs as we were playing a new game my sister-in-law shared
with chocolate flying back and forth across the room,
flying paper as the boys were opening their gifts and wanting to show everyone,
tears as we read a letter to each one of us from my mom and dad
(good tears, not sad ones)
and quick catch-ups before it was back to the middle of december.

on our way home, i felt so overwhelmed, so filled with gratitude.
presents are nice, but feeling loved and connected is so much more.
gifts that were given meant something because thought and time were put into them.
the gift was nice, but the meaning behind it meant far more.
it was fun to give, it was overwhelming to receive.

i love my family--with all of our quirks like needing to take several hundred pictures in a few days,
having a gift exchange just for the pets, or watching the same movie a couple times in the same weekend because we are talking through it.

i love that our tradition of early Christmas hasn't changed.