The most wonderful time of the year....

That's right folks: CHRISTMAS!

Christmas is coming soon, and to me that is the best time of the year! Don't get me wrong I like thanksgiving and have a lot to be thankful for but there is just something about Christmas! This year though it will be a little different... of course we are still going to church Christmas Eve and will probably order Dominoes like we have for every Christmas! that I can remember, however, no one seems to remember when that got started my parents came to the conclusion it was back in the days when they were the only ones doing chores in our old barn with 40 cows and they had to get up early.... so why cook a big dinner? I love that we do that though because we go to church come home eat Dominoes, open our family presents, watch a Christmas! movie and go to bed. Then my parents get up at 3:00 to go do chores and Mary and I come out at 7:00 to help. Then when chores are all done we rush to the house to get cleaned up and ready for Grandma Liebenstein's. Now that is an adventure in itself... when we were younger we would get to Grandma's take the Christmas! picture in front of the Christmas! tree then eat brunch and start by opening our stockings. We would gradually move to the bigger presents with multiple snack and potty breaks in there, and then finally 5 or 6 hours later we would sit down to Jesus's birthday party complete with a birthday cake and ham. Now we do all that same stuff but instead of everyone buying presesnts for everyone we draw names, but sometimes the pile is still to the middle of the living room! I wouldn't trade any part of this for anything! I love my family and Christmas! The best is when everyone can be there, but now that everyone is getting old and has to split their time with other family's.

The Byrns side is different but still fun in it's own way.... This year we are lucky that my cousins, grandparents, great aunt, and great grandma are joining us at our house for Christmas! We have some different traditions on that side including eating noodles, yes folks noodles for Chrismas! dinner.... if you know my dad you can imagine how well that flys haha.... then we all sit in a circle and play the greed game where everyone buys a $50.00 present that they would want and we roll dice until everyone has a present, for the most part everyone goes home with something they like.

I have pretty much had a count down going for the past month on how many days until Christmas! (Its 39 days in case you were wondering....) haha and I plan to sneak our little tree from the basement back to college with me until Christmas! break (hopefully Mary won't notice)

So if anyone needs help getting into the Christmas! spirit after Thanksgiving I'm your girl! I already plan to put up Christmas! lights the day after Thanksgiving, take in some black friday shopping, and bake cookies for my friends at school, as well as get a HUGE Christmas! TREE for our house... the perks of having a vaulted ceiling is getting HUGE Christmas! TREES! The only thing left is taking our classy Christmas! Card picture... so watch your mail for that special treat haha Rumor has it G & M are planning their own Christmas! letter too....