Christmas in July

About this time, every year without fail, I start getting really excited for Christmas. I’m talking to the point of wanting to cry when I turn on some Christmas music (because I always turn on Christmas music for a day or two before getting any sort of self-control).

This is what I looked like earlier:

When I was growing up, we waited to listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving dinner, and the early the very next day we’d all be waist-deep in our Christmas decorations with the Christmas music blaring through the house and all sorts of endorphins pumping through our systems. In December we celebrated Advent religiously, waited for Saint Nicholas to stop by on the 6^th, and had a big birthday party for me, dad, and my cousin.  Christmas Eve has always been my favorite day of the year, though, because it’s still so full of anticipation. We celebrated Christmas Eve at Oma and Opa’s house for years before it got to be too much for them. There was always a smorgasbord of delightful German-made foods (which meant they were delicious), singing around the piano, Opa ‘s reading of Luke 2, and the gift exchange between all the aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Then Christmas morning we sat and waited in the hallway before mom and dad told us it was okay to go (we have years of home videos with clips of us bleary-eyed, crazy-haired, and impatient to run to the stockings and tree). I’m pretty sure all we did was eat tons of chocolate and watch movies in our pajamas.  And still do, minus the hallway and video camera part. Christmas has definitely changed at our home, but it’s still lovely.

This year I’m bound and determined to set aside a day to bake tons of cookies, have a Christmas party complete with caroling, visit Leavenworth, drink hot chocolate every day, etc. etc. Those are things we just didn’t really very much growing up. Mom can’t eat gluten, so she didn’t care about the cookies, but there’s something fun about getting flour all over oneself and dropping plates off at neighbors houses.  When I have my own babies, I think those are some traditions I’d really like to establish, that they can look forward to every year, and find comfort and love in.

One day what I’d really, really, really love is to spend Christmas in a cabin with a huge fireplace, lots of snow outside, no cell reception, and totally surrounded by family. There would be cookie baking, carol singing, snow playing, hot chocolate drinking happiness every day. And someone please tell me what could possibly be better than cuddling by the fire with blankets, hot chocolate, Christmas music playing softly in the background, twinkling lights, and snow falling outside! Heaven, I tell you. HEAVEN.

Last year at Christmas I was living with a bunch of college girls, working long weekends in a kitchen, and I didn’t come home to see family until three days before Christmas Day, so I hardly got any time to really celebrate. It was terrible. But this year I live with my family, I have a great job, and the biggest hunk of a sweetheart to share it with, so I’m already excited, and I’m  already counting my blessings. It feels so good to be in a place that I love, surrounded by wonderful people, and really feeling like I’m in the right place.

See, this is what Christmas does to me! I’m being emotional all over the place. Man. Just wait until its fall and I start baking up a storm. That’s when the tears start falling because I get so happy. Ridiculous.

Now I need to go roast some s’mores or something, maybe hike a mountain. Ya know, wrap my head around this whole summer thing.

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In other news: we had the very first wedding in my family last week, and we all survived. Barely, but we did. And we’re all so so happy for the gorgeous couple!  Yay for love!