{Christmas!}

Christmas was interesting this year.

First off, It didn't feel like Christmas to me until around 9 pm Christmas Eve when my entire family sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer together on the way home from Grandparents Griffin.

Then we had church at 9 am Christmas morning, so I saw presents lying around the tree while eating  my breakfast, but we didn't even venture into that room until after church. 

This was the first year where my mom did not photograph every single present we got before, during and after opening it. I was okay with it, though I think it would have been funny to capture my excitement when opening this beast of a suitcase.

It's huge (I used my tennis shoes for size reference) and I was thrilled.  It has the 360 degree spinner wheels and will be perfect for my upcoming move. (2 weeks from yesterday!) 

We also didn't keep up on our advent book this year. We usually read one door a day and read two on Christmas Eve. We ended up reading the whole book Christmas Eve and calling it good.

Other than that, I got some awesome presents and enjoyed watching Cars 2 and Psych episodes with my family.

Here's the gift I was most surprised about.

The most beautiful, shimmery Fossil purse EVER. I saw it at Fashion Place Mall with my mom last week and fell in love with it. It's a nice sized purse that will be great for work and play in Disney World. I was planning on a very small blue Mud purse as my play bag, and a bigger bag as my work bag, but now I think I'll just stick with this one.  When we saw it I told my mom I loved it, but did not need it. You can imagine my shriek when I opened the box to find it nestled along with it's matching mini wallet. 

Now, here's the most amazing present of this year.  Take a look at the following picture I borrowed from Google.

 This is my favorite painting. Period. It's of Joseph and Mary on their journey to Bethlehem. If you can't tell, Mary is very much 'with child', and Joseph looks absolutely exhausted. 

I know I haven't mentioned this on the blog yet, but I have a very, very good friend serving a mission in Houston TX. He asked me a few months ago what my favorite church related painting was, and I answered with the above painting. 

 I opened my Christmas present from him a day early and almost cried when I pulled this leather scripture case out of the box.

These pictures don't do this case justice. It's absolutely amazing. I can't stop staring at it. It's simply stunning.

Hope you all had a merry Christmas!

loves to you all
~Courtney