Merry
Christmas, friends. What a gift YOU give to me by showing up here throughout
the year to read, to share your own hearts, and to encourage!
Ryan
and I (and Lexi too!) hope this day brings beauty. Maybe it will bring a little
chaos, but we absolutely hope there are some quiet moments that allow you to sit, savor, and
ponder, just like Mary.
We’ll
be back tomorrow with some stories of our own Christmas day, but until then,
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Well, it’s probably too late to give you a gift inspiration
if you are running behind for Christmas TOMORROW, but I do want to share with
you some fun finds I ran across this month! Ready?
Return
Address Label. A few months ago, I ordered a return address
stamper for myself for church. I told Ryan that before we did our Christmas
card mailing, I wanted to be sure to get a return address label stamper for us.
We’ve only lived here two and a half years and have been handwriting our
address that entire time! Ha! I used the same Amazon link, but we chose a
different design for home.
Office
Chair. It isn’t often (truly!) that I fall prey to an
influencer, but I did this month! Let me tell you the story of my office chair.
You may or may not remember that I have two desks in our house. One is in our
kitchen and is a desk built into the counter. When we bought the house, it came
with a wooden chair that had tons of character, but ZERO comfort. It was fine
until I worked at LifeWise and sat in that chair for 8-10 hours a day. There
weren’t enough pillows in the world to make it comfortable. So we sold it in
our rummage a couple of years ago, and when my parents moved to Swiss Village,
I inherited their desk chair from their house. It was a true office chair that
felt good, but the arms prevented it from sliding under the desk completely,
and our kitchen just is not big enough to support a chair sticking out in the
middle. Plus – it just wasn’t aesthetically pleasing for the main part of the
home.
So….I saw this chair on social media! It’s extra wide, so I
can sit cross-legged on it, and it doesn’t have arms, so it slides right under.
It’s so much prettier in our space, and it’s so comfortable. I cashed in
driving reward money and bought it for myself, and I’m so glad I did!!
Suitcases (again). I told you last month that we
purchased new suitcases, since ours were about 15 years old and terribly beaten
from travel. I was excited to have a new set, but I was absolutely unprepared
for how much I would love them! They are designed differently from what we had,
and we can actually pack so much more efficiently now. It was such a game
changer in EVERY WAY!!!
Heated
vest. This was the gift I gave to Ryan for our anniversary, and
he has given it rave reviews. It’s a puffer coat vest that has a battery pack
and heat in it. He can choose high or low heat (or none) and it keeps his core
warm. He wore it while he shoveled snow, and while we walked miles and miles
all over downtown Indianapolis in the freezing cold. I’m so happy he has this
for the winter!
Retro
Radio. I do not have this, but I saw it and thought it was so
cute! I have come to really enjoy the look of vintage things, so it caught my
attention.
Tape Holder/Dispenser. I thought this was so handy!! Isn’t it the WORST to try to pull tape off the dispenser while wrapping gifts? This could be the answer! (I don’t have this either, but I thought it was cute.)
Good
morning! We still have a week left in this month, but I’m going to go ahead and
share some updates from this month! I marked some things completely off my 50
Before 50 List and made progress on others! Let’s take a look, shall we?
Date day at Top Golf = done! I told you about this
back when I shared the story of our anniversary trip! We had a gift card to Top
Golf, so we decided to do that as part of our anniversary adventures. As I said
then, going on a Monday morning in the winter proved to be quite the gift. It
was so quiet, and we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves! For people
who are terrible at golf, that’s important.
Recreate 5 simple dates we’ve done before = progress. We
already did one earlier this year, and now we’ve done two more! While on our
anniversary trip, we went to the Carmel Christkindlmarkt, which we visited
initially back in 2018, and we went to the Cake Bake Shop, which we first tried
several years ago!
Watch Gilmore Girls = progress. We are
about halfway through season 3. We only started a little over a month ago, so I
feel like we are making good progress! We are enjoying it, and it’s fun to have
a feel-good show (rather than a crime show) to watch each night.
Thrift 50 things on my wish list instead of buying new =
progress. I’ve made it to twelve! This month we visited a huge thrift store
while on our anniversary trip, and we found some real treasures! One thing I
purchased was a gift, so it’s been sent to its new home. Ryan and I found some
melamine dishes and silverware to keep for when we have company. We never have
enough of our regular set to use when we have company, and we grew tired of
buying paper plates and plastic silverware. So now we have a hospitality stash!
We found a pair of 5 pound hand weights. We’ve learned that’s a weight we
sometimes BOTH want, and we only had one pair. We found a brand new tabletop
ironing board. Full disclosure: I don’t iron often, but when I do, I always
have to put a towel on the table. This one was still in the packaging and
stores away in a closet! I also found a cute little sign I’m going to put in
our laundry room after Christmas!
Do some sort of coffee adventure = done! As I shared
a few days ago, we completed the Adams County Coffee Experience and had the
best time with it. Such fun!
As I close out this year, I’ve officially marked off five of
the 50 things on my list. I have another eleven in progress! 😊
I feel very good about this. Stay tuned for more updates!
Christmas was our first holiday
together right after we were married. When we came home from our honeymoon, we
had something like fifteen days until Christmas, and we hurried and scurried to
send out cards, shop, wrap, and attend a bunch of parties while learning our
own rhythms of life together.
As we open this Christmas week
together, I thought I’d take a quick trip down memory lane to peek at our Christmas
Days from each of our 13 years together!
2012 – Our first Christmas:
Our
sweet tree in our Marion house. We cobbled this together with minimal time to
put up ANYTHING, and we completely enjoyed being together for this very first Christmas!
2013 – The Christmas with the Big Surprise!
Another
picture of our Marion house tree…and there’s our sweet Braeya girl. She loved sitting
right there, monitoring the happenings of the neighborhood out the front
window. This was the year our Kansas family showed up on Christmas morning, and
none of us knew they were coming! It was such fun! (I also miss this shirt.)
2014 – Photo Booths and Petri Dishes!
I found
this picture of us decorating our tree at the Marion house. We had more time
this year, since we weren’t squeezing in a wedding right before! This was also
the year my dad was sick on Christmas, and as a joke, we all wore masks for the
family picture. (Little did we know what was coming in a few years!) And Ryan
and I took a photo booth to ALL our Christmas gatherings and had fun with photo
shoots!
2015 – Our last Christmas in Marion!
We didn’t
know it yet, but this was our last Christmas in our Marion house. By April of
the next year, we would be living in Kokomo!
2016 – Our first Christmas in Kokomo!
I loved
decorating our Kokomo house for Christmas. It’s the biggest house we’ve ever
lived in, and there were so many perfect spots for tucking in a little bit more
Christmas. It was by FAR the biggest living room we’ve ever had, and our big
old real trees looked amazing in the corner. This was also the year Braeya gave
us a run for our money on a family photo…
2017 – A “Normal” Christmas?
I
think this may have been one of our most uneventful Christmas seasons ever. We
decorated early because we hosted my family for Thanksgiving, following Mom’s joint
replacement surgery. I loved having room in our kitchen for a full-size tree. (Our
kitchen was our big window to the street, and it always looked so pretty.) This
is also one of my favorite official Christmas pictures we’ve ever done.
2018 – The last Christmas with Nita.
I
couldn’t find our “official” Christmas photo of the two of us with the tree on
Christmas. I have it somewhere, but it wasn’t easily found for this post. But I
did find this picture of exhaustion that best describes our 2018 Christmas
season. Ryan’s mom was in the middle of her glioblastoma battle, and we hosted
his side of the family for Christmas, because she was staying at the rehab
hospital down the street from us. I’m so glad we had the time and space to put
that Christmas together! It was sweet, even if it wasn’t typical.
2019 – The Christmas of firsts and lasts.
This
year was our first Christmas without Nita, and as you might expect, it had its
own way of being hard. It was also our first Christmas with our sunroom in
Kokomo, and it was the most perfect place for opening gifts – without a doubt! We
had no idea it was also our last Christmas with our sunroom, with that house,
and with Kokomo, because before the next Christmas, we’d be living in Grabill
and working at WillowBridge! And, you know, the world would have changed
entirely.
2020 – Christmas by ourselves.
It so
happened that this year, we had ZERO family gatherings that took place on Christmas.
We didn’t have many at all that year, as most gatherings were halted by the
pandemic. We had the day off from WillowBridge and stayed in our jammies ALL
DAY. It was a grand, glorious, low key, precious day. We loved it.
2021 – Christmas on duty.
This
was our last Christmas at WillowBridge, though we did not know that on this
day. We were on duty, and most of our tenants left the building, so it was a
quiet day of work for us. We spent as much time together as we could and ended
the day watching football in the Community Room – by ourselves. (We also
celebrated Christmas with Lexi by going to visit her where she lived with her
dog-mama. She was too tiny to live with us yet, but we couldn’t bear to NOT see
her for Christmas!)
2022 – Our only Christmas in Bluffton and our first
Christmas with Lexi at home!
Christmas
was on Sunday this year, so we had a church service in the mix! But we enjoyed
celebrating with our sweet girl on Christmas day. She has certainly livened up
the Christmas gift exchanges. 😊
2023 – Our first Christmas at the lake and our last
Christmas at Mom and Dad’s.
Christmas
on the lake is pure joy, my friends. We had the best time with Lexi and
celebrating in our new home. We also traveled to my parents’ house for
Christmas this year, and by Easter, they had moved to Swiss Village, so this
was the last Christmas in their long-time home.
2024 – Christmas on the road…
Lexi
had a lot of fun Christmassing with us at home, and then we packed up and had
Christmas with my family at Swiss Village. It isn’t the worst thing to get to
roll up to a table where others have prepared the food! 😊
Last year was also our last time ever to see Ryan’s Grandpa Cox on Christmas.
He’s with the Lord this year, and we miss him!
No two Christmases
have been alike. We’ve had different houses, different celebrations, different people!
But each one brings a flood of the warmest memories. I am so grateful for 13
beautiful Christmases with my love!
It’s Christmas Sunday!! We are excited for this day and hope you enjoy yours if you’re attending special Christmas services today! I brought a sampling from our week for you…can’t believe I only have one more of these for 2025!
Last Sunday was the kids’ program at church. Is there
anything better than preschoolers recreating the Nativity?? Priceless. We also
went to support the church kiddos that are part of our Bible quizzing team, and
that was so much fun. They did a great job!
It was soooooooooooooooo cold here at the beginning of the
week, and we tried a new-to-us soup recipe. It was a clear winner, and that
just made the whole week start on a cozy, wonderful note.
We watched Christmas Vacation this week…all snuggled up under blankets with the trees on. I have so appreciated the chance to be home a little more this week. I needed some rest!
As I shared with you a couple of days ago, we also had a fun
cookie decorating night. That little kit we bought was worth it. All the
hard work done for us, and all the fun of a quick decorating adventure
together. I would absolutely buy one of those again.
We spent an evening this week at the wrestling match Ryan
announced. I don’t mind saying again how proud I am of all his hard work in
preparing and bringing energy and enthusiasm to the night!
I worked from home Friday – and someone was hoping I’d do a little
less working and a little more playing frisbee. She was kind of disappointed, I
think. Listening to sermon prep wasn’t quite the same in her world.
Yesterday did not turn out as we planned, but despite the
detours, we had a good day. We bought Lexi’s Christmas gifts, and we decided,
among other things, to get her a new mini-bed for our kitchen. The one she has
now was her original actual bed when she was a puppy. She outgrew it, so we got
her a new one, but she kept sitting on her original one in my office. When we
moved here to the lake, we put it in the kitchen so she could sleep next to me
while I work. It looks so bedraggled now, so we got her a new one…and she
refused to sit on it. We finally covered it with a blanket she sits on often,
and that worked!
