Well, I had to grow up sometime...

As a kid, I could tell you exactly how Christmas Day would go.  It was always the same, and I reveled in the very predictability of it.  It built anticipation, because I knew what was coming.  As adults, nothing really changed.  Christmas is supposed to go as follows:

Wake up, at my parents' house.
Chafe while we wait for my brother to wake up, banging a few pots around to hurry the process, at my parents' house.
Open stockings, at my parents' house.
Have breakfast {always the same mouth-watering pastry, eggs, bacon}, at my parents' house.
Drink from the same Christmas mugs we were assigned when we were kids, at my parents' house.
Read the Christmas story, at my parents' house.
Open gifts, taking turns from youngest to oldest, at my parents' house.
Have a wonderful Christmas dinner, at my parents' house.

There is a theme here.  I don't know if you caught it.  We were supposed to be in Tennessee on Christmas Day, at my parents' house.  This year, for the first time {excepting Jack's birth}, we decided to stay home.  It would have cost four plane tickets this year to fly {with Jack turning two}, and our cars are each around twenty years old, so it just didn't make sense to try to get home when my sister and her husband weren't going to be there and my brother works a lot during the holidays.  Instead, we invited my parents to come to us.

They couldn't come until the twenty-sixth because my dad was preaching on Christmas, so we were on our own for Christmas Day.  I was dreading it. Maybe that's too strong. I just didn't want things to change. 

But they have to change, right?  I mean, I'm thirty-three with two and a half kids, and at some point I had to put my big girl pants on!

Well, we did it.  We reigned over our first Christmas as grownups. The first Christmas where I planned and made the Christmas meals by myself {well, Handsome Hero grilled, but you know what I mean}. The first Christmas where the day was laid out as we planned it. Our first traditions.

You know, we did okay.  It was fun as a small family.  I don't know if we started any new traditions, but we enjoyed celebrating the birth of Christ as a family of 4.5.

Well, maybe Jack didn't....