Our First Married Christmas - 2010 - Part 1

I arrived very early to NC (around 8 am) and my mom and sister were waiting to pick me up curbside. We popped into Panera for a quick bagel breakfast and then did a little shopping. My mom treated my sister and me to a new dress (Saks had just marked down a bunch of beautiful winter dresses) – I picked a long sleeve, short black dress with an asymmetrical neckline by Kay Unger and I absolutely LOVE IT! In fact, my mom was the one who picked it out for me – love, love! C. picked up a cute Calvin Klein belted dress. After our little shopping trip we headed back home to relax a little. That evening we enjoyed a delicious dinner together of grilled chicken with bacon and honey mustard and homemade sweet potato fries. We finished our meal with a delicious pound cake made by my mom. What a great way to be welcomed home!

M. arrived later that evening. I woke up that morning at 3:30 in order to get a shower in and get to the airport by 6:00 am, so I was guessing I would fade pretty quickly. I really wanted to stay up until M. arrived, but passed out about a half and hour before he got there. Luckily I was dreaming on the couch and he gently woke me up when he got in. We headed to bed soon after so we’d be ready to enjoy our vacation time together starting the next day!

M. and I spent the 23rd doing some last minute Christmas shopping and wrapping up all of our gifts! I was so excited to give everyone their gifts…even though sometimes it’s hard for me to decide what my family members will really, really like I think I did a good job this year. After a day of shopping and running around town, I dropped off a few neighborhood Christmas gifts and then came home to see my mom busy in the kitchen. Since we weren’t together for Thanksgiving, my mom thought it would be nice to have Thanksgiving dinner all over again! What was really great was that my brother E. had just arrived from China, which meant the whole family was together! The food was of course delicious, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and homemade gravy – yum! We spent the rest of the evening lounging around and hanging out together in the living room. I always love some family bonding time! :)

My mom certainly outdid herself this year with the decorating. The house looked beautiful as always. The tree was sparkling and the garlands found throughout the house were full of sparkly details. Almost everywhere you look there is the perfect little holiday detail. One thing that you might notice is that she transformed the "family tree" used at our wedding in June into the most BEAUTIFUL Christmas card display! I absolutely loved how she changed it and it was so fun being able to look at all of the cards from family friends!

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is our Christmas Eve traditions. This year during the day we just decided to just hang around the house, but that evening things were in full celebration mode! We started with Christmas Eve service at one of the local churches. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had the chance to catch up with the priest who married us and the service was absolutely packed – definitely gets you in the spirit! When we came home my mom had our traditional lasagna dinner just about ready – she popped it in the oven before heading off to church, so everything was timed perfectly. The lasagna, fresh homemade bread and salad were perfection – such a comforting meal for a REALLY chilly evening. We had great conversation at the dinner table filled with many laughs and we sipped on some delicious wine. After dinner my mom had prepared a special surprise – chocolate lava cakes! It was her first attempt at them and they came out perfectly. They were super rich and a really beautiful dessert too! Don't worry, I made sure to take some portraits of most who were in attendance along the way. Notice the "on-the-fly" portrait of my older brother! :) Also notice the difference in the photos taken with my mom's amazing camera and my now out of date model...I think a new, nice camera is certainly on my wish-wish-wish list!

After dinner we made our way to the Christmas tree where we opened our new pajamas, a Smith family Christmas Eve tradition, and the beautiful ornaments that my mothers chose for us (also a tradition that my mom started so that when we have our own trees they will tell a story about our many Christmases). My mom typically buys us ornaments that reflect something about our year, and she typically chooses Christopher Radko ornaments (the most BEAUTIFUL holiday decorations). This year mine was a “Just Married” hot pink car and Michael received a guitar (my mom mentioned that unfortunately there weren’t any great “law” related ornaments so she went with a guitar which was one of his big law school graduation presents from his parents). We were up pretty late on Christmas Eve with all of these activities so not too long after we decided to head to bed so that “Santa” wouldn’t pass our house by.

Christmas morning we popped out of bed around 9:00am and headed downstairs to meet the rest of the family. We chose our “present opening” spots (you can tell in some of the pictures that certain chairs are not meant to be together in the same room!) and got to work! We all must have been very good this year because Santa was super generous. M. was gifted many wonderful things – fabulous new Brooks Brothers dress shirts and ties for work, a beautiful leather card case for showing his bar card when he needs too, a monogrammed (very masculine monogram!) gray cashmere scarf, and some great gift certificates to restaurants in NYC (can't wait to use those with him!)! I know he was so pleased with all of his gifts and I saved mine for last. We have a little tradition going of gifting a Burberry item every Christmas – our first Christmas I gifted him a beautiful pair of cuff links and last Christmas M. gifted me a classic Burberry watch. I couldn’t let our little tradition die – it was my turn, so I gifted M. a beautiful black Burberry tie. I know that he’ll wear it all the time! In addition, my “main” gift to M. was the Bose Sound dock that he has wanted for years. He was really excited to finally have it and when we tested it out it really did sound amazing!

I was also gifted some really wonderful things by my family and by M., actually I was spoiled rotten. We joked that it turned out to be a Kate Spade Christmas because of all the Kate Spade items that were gifted. I was given an adorable pair of Kate Spade black rainboots (Style Name: Randi) with bow detail and even a little heel (found here, but mine are all black), a great small black leather Kate Spade bag -- for my NYC evenings my mom made sure to note (sorry, can’t find a link to this one), a few really great cashmere sweaters, a really cute blue umbrella with a dark brown monogram, a super long strand of light gray freshwater pearls, some fun Kate Spade earrings from my sister (Seen here), some fun accessories from Talbots (a great black patent belt with gold hardware, headband, ribbon belt, and black bow gloves and hat!), some adorable camel colored Portolano fingerless gloves with an attached piece to make them mittens (perfect for freezing cold NYC days!), Cole Haan black leather boots with the most adorable tassels (Seen here, but in Brown Suede), a red Longchamp bag from my brother, and finally the beautiful Kate Spade Gold Coast Maryanne bag in black that I’ve been eyeing for a while now from M. (get one here)! M. also gave me the Jillian Michael's Yoga Meltdown video I've been wanting! WOW! I am set for the next five years with all of these amazing goodies.

After we made a complete and utter mess of the living room, we all made our way into the kitchen to enjoy the homemade cinnamon rolls that my mom makes every Christmas morning (again, love traditions!) and then we all got gussied up for the rest of the day. My grandmother came over and it was nice to see her since I don’t think I’d seen her since our wedding in June! My mom had made a few appetizers and we watched a movie and played around with some of our Christmas gifts. Before we knew it dinner was ready – beef tenderloin with mushroom, twice baked potatoes, green beans, and fresh baked bread. Our Christmas meal was definitely delicious and while we chatted the evening away and enjoyed the holiday the snow was also piling up outside! We caught a few photos of us after it got dark and the snow continued to fall -- I love that you can see little sparkly snowflakes in the background of the photos!

It actually started snowing around 1pm and then didn’t stop until the next morning around 9am! I think we ended up with about 7 inches, which is crazy for NC…on Christmas! We were supposed to head to TN to have "Christmas" with M.'s family on the 26th, but with all of the snow and with us being unsure of how clear the roads were towards M.’s parents house we decided to stay in NC one more day to let things melt. M., C., and I bundled up and headed out to take some pictures because everything was really SO beautiful! We only drove around the neighborhood, but it was still fun! C. and I had an impromptu photo shoot in an “untouched” section of the snowy trees. I love the pictures – such a pretty white blanket of snow around us! M. and I also had a little photo shoot when we got back home – this time in the back yard. Again, it’s rare to have such a pretty snowfall, so we definitely wanted to take advantage of it!

That evening the roads had actually cleared up quite a bit so we decided a movie was in order. Our whole family packed into the car and headed off to watch Little Fockers. I was expecting it to be a little bit more about the kids (hence the movie title), but it was still cute nonetheless -- lots of funny moments. After our movie we figured what better for the day after Christmas than pizza?! We stopped in at our favorite local pizza place and all split two delicious pies – one with the works and a deep dish crust and one hand tossed sun dried tomato and artichoke pizza – both were delicious and definitely hit the spot (Can you tell we ate well over vacation?!).