Four Things For Friday 12.27.13

Hi Everybody! I hope you all had the merriest of Christmases!

I've dug out from the wrappings, gifts, candy, and cookies long enough to bring you todays Four Things.

Honestly, I didn't take a whole lot of photos of our Christmas, so today I'm sharing some outtakes from our Christmas card photo shoot.

1.) To start off with, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve. Our Christmas Eve church service centered on the GLORY of Christ at His birth. After church we always have a houseful of family and friends over. Each year we have such a great time. And we always end the evening singing Christmas carols together.

Most years by the time it's time to head to church, I'm feeling a little stressed out from preparing for a house full of guests. But this year I felt very calm and just didn't let myself go there. My family greatly appreciated that! 

2.) Christmas Morning we woke up and opened gifts here at home. We've never had a big traditional Christmas breakfast at home because it isn't usually too long before we need to head out the door to start our Christmas "tour"....first with Hubster's family and then mine.

What a blessing to be able to share Christmas with all our family!

3.) File this under "Didn't See THAT Coming!".....Hubster cashed in all those frequent flyer miles he's accumulated this year and surprised me for Christmas with a trip to Florida....with my sister! Later in the day, I got to surprise HER! It was such fun. I would share the photos of that, but we both did the "ugly cry" as Oprah calls it.

So we will be heading to Florida for a week sometime in January. The two of us haven't been on a Girl's Trip together in YEARS, so it's' going to be so much fun!

4.) I was kind of surprised yesterday by several of my Facebook friends saying that they were in the process of taking down their Christmas trees. Seriously? To me, the Holiday season isn't over until after New Years. We usually start taking ours down on New Years Day. This year it will probably be a couple days later because of the New Years plans we have and because Hubster heads back to work on the 2nd.

I have to admit I'm ready for a little simplicity around the house. But I can't imagine not having my tree up for New Years.

So what do YOU do? When does your Christmas tree come down?

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with family and friends. Here is the final photo we chose for our Christmas cards. It'll never be perfect....but it will be US.

Have a great weekend!