It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

My brother Andrew and I have this tradition of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas together each Christmas Eve. We started when we were little and have found it's much harder to keep since we've gotten married. But we're still staying true to Charlie Brown.

This year Andrew and Lauren were in Maryland at Nathan and Alisa's house and we were in Utah. But never fear, we still watched good old Charlie thanks to the amazing abilities of Skype. We met Andrew, Lauren, Nathan and Alisa online on Christmas night. After taking them on a brief tour of our home (Alisa hasn't ever seen it, so I carried our laptop around for her to see how it looked through our web-cam) we watched our movie. I think it was even cooler than watching it all in the same room. Here's a picture of our computer monitor- our computer was facing the movie on our TV so that the Maryland folk could watch the movie through their computer. So on our screen we could see them watching (and of course hear them make comments all through) and a reflection of our TV playing good old Charlie Brown.

The rest of Christmas was also great. It was nice and simple since I've been so stinking sick lately, but honestly I kind of enjoyed having an excuse not to get involved in all the holiday stress this year. No neighbor gifts (sorry guys) or Christmas cards and I bought just about everything online. It was really nice to just enjoy the season.

My parents flew in for Grandpa's birthday and Mom was able to stay here until Christmas day. It was our first Utah Christmas -both Doug and I had a hard time really believing it was Christmas since we've have gotten so used to traveling to either Idaho or Ohio. It's almost like the flight/car ride is always what marked the beginning of the Christmas season.

Christmas Eve dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Chris and Christmas Day dinner with Doug's family definitely made staying in Utah worth it. It's great to be so close to family.