December...

...wait...December?!?! What on earth happened to July, August, September, October, or November?! Man, time really does fly when you are having fun!

We already have most of our Christmas decorations out (our collection is quite pitiful...). Hoping to get a tree this weekend from one of those "chop-your-own-tree" kind of places! We have been talking about doing that for the last few years, but always find ourselves just stopping in at Jewel or some church parking lot and picking one up on a whim (even when we first moved to Illinois in Dec 2009 and had absolutely no furniture in our new apartment for another 2 weeks). Now that we have little Rylie, we are determined to make it a tradition! And I do love the smell of a fresh tree! ...ask me again in July when I am still finding fir tree needles to vacuum up... :-)

We also still have to find the perfect Christmas ornament for her...another tradition I'd like to start - this year, we will pick hers out for her, but probably starting next year she will be able to pick out an ornament that is all hers. I think it will be fun to see how her interests change from one year to the next by seeing what ornament she will pick.

This year, we will be celebrating Christmas with Chris' parents early. And after Christmas, I will probably be taking Rylie with me to North Carolina to see part of my family (traveling alone with a 6 month old...I'm sure there will be a future blog post about that!). That means that this Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Chris and I will be relaxing at home, spoiling our little girl and starting our own new traditions. I'm super excited about this! Sure, I love spending Christmas with my family or Chris' family, but now we have our own little family and I can't wait to see what Rylie does when she sees the lit tree and presents (i realize that she probably will not have a clue what is going on, but I'm sure her eyes will be wide with wonder the entire time!).

One thing about it, she has already been practicing the wake-up-early-to-see-what-santa-brought-me routine... She has got that pretty much down pat! :-). Ugh, I think we are in it for the long haul now...I think I was about 18 when I first started wanting to sleep in on Christmas day and I remember having to fight my sister off me when she would come to get me at some ungodly hour, too excited to even speak properly! At least this year, Santa has a bit of a warm up and practice run before the baby really "understands"...