Our Very Merry Christmas

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season so far! Ours has been crazy and fun and hectic and everything that Christmas should be :)

We kicked off all the fun the weekend before Christmas by having a belated birthday extravaganza for Mike. We drove down to Wilmington and enjoyed a fancy sushi dinner (with sake bombs of course!), stayed in a nice hotel, and did some bar hopping late into the night! I think our favorite part of the trip was not having to wake up at 8 am with Lou the next morning.. Sleeping in for the win! ;)

The Monday after that my mom and youngest sister Gracie flew into Jacksonville to spend the holiday with us and my step-dad followed on Tuesday evening. It was our first time ever hosting Christmas so of course we were really excited! We had lots of yummy food, played lots of games, watched old home videos, and drank lots of mimosas ;) But for me the best part was waking up together on Christmas morning, eating cream cheese danish, and opening all of our presents and stockings together. There's nothing that reminds me of my childhood quite like that does!

We made a feast of turkey, ham, twice baked potatoes, homemade rosemary bread, and AMAZING pecan pie. Oh, and played Quirkle of course ;) 

Of course my favorite part of Christmas was having family all together, but I think my second favorite part was one of my many amaaazing gifts from my hubby... A Canon EOS Rebel T5 :)

In the past year or so I've realized that iPhone photos, even at their very best, just aren't gonna cut it, especially once we start a family and I have little ones to take pictures of! So I did my research and figured out which camera I wanted and the hubs delivered! 

I am probably the most beginner of all beginners when it comes to photography. I've never had more than a point-and-shoot digital and even with those I wouldn't say that I have any kind of exceptional talent. But I am determined to figure this thing out and to learn to take some decent spectacular pictures! We played around with it a bit while my family was in town and snapped a few good ones :)

Credit for this one goes to Gracie :)

 Can you tell what my favorite subject to shoot is? ;)

 Now that Christmas is over, we have a couple of guests staying with us for New Year's. Mike's friend Jim and his girlfriend Megan will be here for the next couple of days and we will host a little get together to drink champagne and watch the ball drop!

On a less happy note.. We are in full blown prep mode for Mike's upcoming deployment. Thankfully this deployment is considered a non-combat deployment and he will be spending most of his time around the Black Sea. Much safer than Afghanistan, that's for sure :) He will most likely be leaving around the end of next month and we have about a million things to do before then.. But once I have more info regarding contact information, a time window for his return, all that good stuff :) and once it is made public, I will be sure to share! 

Until then, I hope you all have a safe and happy New Year's! I can't wait to see what 2015 has in store for us!