There were so many reasons that this Christmas was special to me…

We were in our own home. This is the first year that we’ve owned our own home and we were able to spend Christmas there with our friends.

Our friends are amazing. We had a few friends over for dinner on Christmas night and there was a gift exchange. You see, our little girls have a best friend named Mollie and her parents are nothing short of awesome. They are those kinds of friends you can call on at 2 am (don’t worry Melissa, no plans to do that) and they’d drop everything to be there for you. Well, they decided that our girls needed to have bicycles – so they got them for them for Christmas.

Yes, I know she needs a haircut.

Our girls now think they’re grown-ups because they have bicycles instead of tricycles. We took them to the park yesterday to let them ride around. Our house is on a main road and has no sidewalks or anywhere really where the girls can ride their bikes. So, now the girls want to go to the park every. single. day. I’m  halfway obliged to do it, too. They’re so happy on their bicycles!

There was just so much love in the house this weekend that I could have burst.

From Santa, the girls got a telescope and new easels to let them learn and explore art a bit more. They enjoy drawing and creating so much, so it seemed like the obvious gift. They loved them and they were little artists all day long.

I was so excited that I was going to be able to give my hubby some of his favorite tribal design shirts from CrazyShirts.com. Being a Hawaii-based company, it’s basically his favorite thing in the whole wide world. I bought the shirts using my PayPal account so that he wouldn’t have any idea they were coming…that is until Christmas Eve when I received my receipt from CrazyShirts in a branded envelope! He pretended like he didn’t see it and acted very surprised that evening when we exchanged gifts, but he told me later that he knew the minute he saw the envelope from them. Boo. Oh well, I was still able to give him the shirts he’s been wanting for ages!

I will say that I am not a big fan of the week between Christmas and New Years. I never have enough vacation left over to take that week off and it’s consistently and painfully slow at work for the entire week. I really should get better at budgeting my time off. Ha!

So, now you know how my Christmas went. How was yours!?