We Wish You a Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year (A Little Late)

Yes, I know. My New Year's Resolution of doing a better job at keeping up with this blog has not exactly held up. Is there any surprise? How many new year's resolutions actually hold up? We had a wonderful holiday season, especially getting to experience it with Parker for the first time. We kept Christmas this year low key. We didn't buy much for Parker, but we made sure to fill it with all of our family traditions. We started Christmas Eve by picking oranges at a local grove, something we do every year.

Every year we comment on how blessed we feel to live in a place where we have the opportunity to pick oranges, wearing summer clothes, on Christmas Eve. I know many people feel as though they miss the cold weather around the holidays, but that is not us. We thrive on the heat. We love living in a place that allows us to rarely deal with the cold that seems to cut right through your bones. Days like Christmas Eve and traditions like picking oranges just remind us once again that God placed in a location that is absolutely perfect for us.

After picking oranges, we celebrated our usually tradition of Swedish dinner with Rachel and Morfar on Christmas Eve . This year, Rachel hosted Swedish dinner at her apartment and it was delicious as always. This was Parker's first experience with opening presents. He seemed more interested in eating tearing the wrapping paper than the actual present.

Christmas morning at our house went the same way. Before having Christmas lunch, we opened presents, which pretty much went the same way - lots of paper eating.

We ended the holiday season spending New Year's Eve weekend at Disney. Morfar was kind enough to give us some of his DVC points and we were able to stay at the Boardwalk Villas. For those of you that aren't familiar with the Boardwalk, it is within walking distance to Epcot and MGM, which proved to be so beneficial. We didn't have to mess with a bus or our car. We could just walk and enjoy the outdoors. The weather was beautiful all weekend long and with the crowd levels being extremely intense we were able to take it easy, take strolls to Epcot, as well as MGM, and just enjoy the NYE festivities. We spent actual NYE at Epcot. We enjoyed a tasty meal at the San Angel Inn (Mexico) before watching the fireworks (both Epcot and MGM) from the bridge in between the Boardwalk and Beach Club resorts. Naturally, we were pretty exhausted New Year's Day, so we decided to take it pretty easy and walk around Animal Kingdom, which happened to be Parker's first visit to the park. Overall, I'd say our first holiday season with Parker couldn't have been better!