O: What a Life!: A California Christmas

I've been so excited to write this post! Even though Mike and I dated for four years before we were married, we never spent one Christmas together. He was deployed for two of them, he went to his parent's for one (actually I did fly there the day after Christmas, but it's still not Christmas.) and last year our wedding was three weeks after Christmas, so again we each spent it with our families. Needless to say, it was about time we spent a Christmas together!

Although I was very excited about spending a Christmas with Mike, I was extremely nervous about it being my first one away from my parents, or not even spending it with his family for that matter. It was just us and the pups across the country in California, and I was nervous about whether I would actually be able to enjoy it as much as I have all the past Christmases. My mom always makes Christmas special, and I knew I would miss it.

I did miss my family, BUT I absolutely LOVED spending EVERY minute of the Christmas season with my husband and two pups!!! I passed some traditions along, as did he, and we made some new ones of our own. What more could a gal want???

We moved into our house on November 28, right at the beginning of the Christmas season! We unpacked the important things, but I was mostly concerned about decorating for Christmas! It's quite a task to unpack AND decorate for Christmas at the same time, but I did not care!

Here's how our Christmas went:

We got a tree! It wouldn't stand straight, so we bought a new stand and trimmed some branches.

I think white lights are gorgeous, but my mother grew up with big colored lights, I grew up with big colored lights, and my children will grow up with them too! I got butterflies when we plugged them in to check for any lights that were out!

Mike prefers white lights because he grew up with them. Someday we'll have two trees, one with white and one with colored, but for now, we have colored. I love them!

My sweet mother, made our stockings!

One side has our names on them, and when the time comes, we'll hang them the other way where "Dad" and "Mom" will be showing. My mom's the best!!!

We don't have a fireplace, so Mike hung the stockings by the stairs with care!

We decorated the outside of our house. It wasn't my favorite look, but we had just moved in and did what we could at that point.

I made homemade eggnog, something I've always wanted to do. It was yummy!

Christmas Eve:

We started the day ice skating by the bay!

Then we took the pups to Carmel Beach, where pups can run freely off the leash.

Needless to say, they LOVED it!

They even made some friends!

I made Christmas Eve dinner because we had plans for Christmas dinner.

Which wouldn't be complete without layered salad, shoepeg corn casserole and wine!

We misjudged the time for the turkey to cook, so we had to scarf this down and rush to get ready for church.

We went to the 7:00 service at this wonderful little church we love, St. John's Chapel. It was dark so I couldn't get a great picture of it.

We were going to go to Carmel Beach and have a fire, but we got out of church later than expected, so we settled for the fire pits at The Intercontinental Hotel, The Clement Monterey, which is on the water.