At 2 months and 1 1/2 weeks old, Zoie is celebrating her first Christmas and as fate as a way of making things happen without us planning, we are alone in Florida for Christmas. At first we were a little bummed, but as the time got closer I am more and more excited to have our first Christmas as a family together; where we get to start our own traditions and celebrate the beautiful gifts we have in our life.

Money is tight this year, as it is for many and my gift this year was a Christmas tree. Zoie has lots of presents under the tree from friends and family so we decided to not make a big deal of Christmas and we weren’t going to get us or Z anything. As the days got closer and the Christmas music is playing every day with a tree a lit up… mom got excited. Christmas Eve morning as the boys headed to the gym, I strapped little Z in and we went last minute shopping. I decided that though we dont have much money and our family is across the country, that doesn’t mean we can’t make this the perfect first Christmas for Zoie. So today, being Christmas Eve we officially start our new family traditions.

Tonight after dinner we will all gather around (Grady, Zoie, The Puppies, Me and of course our roommate Mogli) and open our Christmas Eve gift. This is the first tradition of many years to come. We will all go change and put on our new PJ’s and watch a Christmas Movie. This year I rented Four Christmas’s for us to watch. I also bought little Z a book full of Christmas stories so we will read a Christmas story every year as well.

A lady that wrapped our gifts today gave me a great additional tradition that I would like to pass onto my kids. Every year little Z will get a Christmas ornament - one that symbolizes the current year for her and what she likes. These will be kept together and when she moves out and has her own Christmas, she will have enough ornaments to decorate her tree with. This lady was an older lady who said they have ornaments on their tree from when they were kids and I really liked this tradition. Aunt Sheena got Zoie her first one to start off this tradition this year.

Tomorrow will be a fun day of opening Z’s gifts, making funeral potatoes (we are bringing a touch of Utah to Florida this Year) and heading off to the school Christmas pot luck, where many other students and their families that are not home for Christmas will be celebrating with us.

More to come after that….

Christmas:
This morning was a riot opening gifts with Zoie. I thought she wouldn’t’ be that into it, but for 2 months old she was awake and alert hanging out in her bumbo seat. She made it all the way through opening gifts and enjoying every minute of it. After we were done and Daisie was done trying to take her toys from her, she just crashed - just like any little kid that stayed up too late the night before. It was so adorable and fun! She got a great Christmas outfit from Aunt Gina, a Beautiful Blanket from Nana, toys from friends, a book and shawl from Grammy, ornament from Sheena - Daisie and Chicago got treats from friends and Grady and me got more PJ’s from Grammy. It was a perfect Christmas morning for our family shared with Mogli.

Christmas afternoon was fun as we went to Wyotech and ate dinner with some of the students, staff and their families. After we helped clean up Grady and I took left overs to the local mission - where the food was greatly appreciated.

Home now and in our new PJ’s. Merry Christmas to Everyone!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Adventures, Zoie Addison. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.