school to be able to spend that time with each other, our family, and everyone important to us. I was very excited to put our first tree up, even though we had nothing but lights to decorate it with. The tree has always been an important thing for me. I miss the days of real trees. I always associate the smell of pine trees with Christmastime. I made a paper chain to put on our tree and a few awesome people gave us some decorations as gifts. We kept everything very simple. On Christmas Eve day we went to my parents house and ate posole and tamales, and watched some Christmas movies with everyone. That night we came home and read the Nativity story together and talked about Christ. It was a very special way to spend our first Christmas Eve together.Christmas morning we went to my parent's house again and had a very simple gift exchange. It's always fun for me to see my younger siblings get excited about everything, as well as my 2 year old cousin Sophia. That afternoon we went to Jared's parents and got to talk on the phone with his brother Brett who's on his mission in Fiji. We got to play with our super cute nieces Savannah and Olivia. (I swear one day Olivia will be old enough to like us. Ha ha!) That night was the craziest snowstorm I've ever seen. It took us about an hour and a half to get back home from Richmond (normally only a 20 minute drive). We had my little brother and sister stay the night with us that night.
For New Years eve we wrote down ten favorite memories/blessings we'd received in the past year. It was really nice to be able to spend the night with each other talking about what we'd done with each other the past year and remembering everything we have to be grateful for. I'm very excited for this new year. Jared and I are back in school and we have two classes together which I'm pretty excited for! Living with Wildlife and Creative Arts. (They're required to graduate.) It's now a competition to see who can get the best grade. ;-D It's gonna be a great year!
