So logically, I was probably going to have a melt down this Christmas. Living in a hotel. Across the world from my family. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Leading up to the big day, I started getting anxious. I wanted a tree. I wanted lights. I wanted my Christmas decorations that I bought last year at Hobby Lobby. I wanted to bake cookies. I wanted to put icing on sugar cookies. But I couldn't. It honestly didn't even feel like Christmas, which was not okay. So I went out and bought a Christmas smelling candle, a poinsettia (our Christmas plant, instead of tree), mistletoe, and an ornament. The Sorenson girls made us ornaments one night out of origami paper and I ended up going to 2 ornament exchanges, so I had plenty of Christmas ornaments to fill our window sill. It was great. The hotel room was looking as much like Christmas as it could given the circumstances. Plus, we received the best package in the world from our parents! They wanted us to have something to open up on Christmas morning, and so they sent wrapped presents. It was seriously, the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done, and James and I could barely speak when we opened the packages and saw the presents. Once again, blessed beyond measure.
But something was still nagging at me...I was getting so frustrated with myself. Then I found this book that I had packed. It's called One Thousand Gifts. My friend Fawn from Georgia gave it me and Meredith as a gift before we left, and we had started reading it together. It is an amazing book- it's all about how to live fully in the moment and be thankful. I realized that I can't live my life always hoping for something else- sounds like a realization I should have made long ago. Right now I have James, a poinsettia, and Christmas presents that our family sent. It also hit me that next year, I will be in a house. I will be able to decorate a tree and hang lights all around. I will be able to bake Christmas cookies, and hopefully see family. But I know Christmas morning I will want to give my right arm to have what I have this year- James and the Ederle Inn. So why think ahead? I stopped being sad at all after I had that realization.
Our Christmas here was incredible. We definitely missed family more than we could have imagined, but our Mom's had already taken care of everything. We literally sat in front of the presents talking about what we did to deserve presents and feeling super guilt that we had definitely NOT been on the ball with our presents :) Whoops. Our family is the best. Hands down.
I even tried to make cookies in the microwave the night before...it was about halfway edible.
We had an amazing breakfast- that took about an hour to cook due to the fact that you can only use one burner at a time because it doesn't fit 2 pans on it... but we kept things warm in the microwave. No worries.
We drank mimosa's with the best prosecco ever and the probably the worst quality of orange juice ever- so it basically balanced things out. We put nutella and peanut butter on our pancakes and devoured the breakfast sausage. It has been a while since we have had a good breakfast around here.
And we opened our presents. Woohoo!! As embarrassing as it is, I am just as excited about opening presents as a 23 year old as I was as a 5 year old. Oh well, I think it's a good thing- most of the time.
We got some wonderful things, but the top 2 presents ended up not being presents at all. First of all the boxes that everything came in have proven most handy when I'm doing laundry! I am no longer dropping random socks as I walk down the hall. Secondly, we got some ziplock baggies! Now we can store food! I'm not sure why we haven't bought baggies at the store yet, but we haven't...probably something to do with the fact that we try and buy as little as possible so we don't look totally ridiculous carrying more than we can handle back to the hotel.
This was extremely long, my b. Hope everyone else had as special of a Christmas as we did!!
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