Christmas, Snow and New Pups

Christmas, Snow and New Pups

We had a pretty fun three weeks around here over Christmas and New Years! Christmas weekend we took a whirlwind road trip to see my family in up Cincinnati for two and half days. The next weekend we got together with all of Stephen’s family to celebrate Christmas with them, and the next weekend we got a few inches of snow (which meant everything shut down and we got some rest)!! It really was a great few weeks of festivities and family, and I am so, so thankful.

Before you go look at all the fun pictures, I have to tell you, Stephen took a lot of them!! He took an intro to photojournalism class in college so he knows his way around a DSLR, and he’s got a great eye. I’ve been trying to take more personal pictures too, but it’s so fun to watch him experiment and have fun (and have some photos of myself)!

As you will probably notice, our time with my family included a LOT of dogs. You’ve already met our new pup, Sadie, several times, but just a month after we adopted her my parents adopted a sweet new hound dog named Cricket. They already had one hound/German Shepherd mix named Rupert, so we had 3 dogs running around, 2 of which were still relatively new (and anxious) and getting used to everything. That made for a very interesting two and half days, let me tell you! But the time with my family, particularly relaxing by the fire on Christmas Eve, was just absolutely lovely.

Then we celebrated Christmas with Stephen’s family. The really nice thing about this season for the Esteses is that even though two of Stephen’s siblings are married, we all still live in the Triangle, no more than 45 minutes away from each other, and his grandparents moved here not too long ago as well. This year several of us were traveling over Christmas, but we were still able to get everyone together on January 2nd to celebrate as a family, and I do not take that for granted.

And then the next weekend it snowed, and the timing could not have been more perfect. We LOVED the time we had with family, but we were definitely feeling tired and like we needed some good time with just each other. Well, a weekend of snow in the south is a surefire way to make you stay home and rest and play board games and drink hot cocoa, so that’s exactly what we did. It was glorious! And now I feel like I got my few weeks of winter, and I’m ready for spring! 😉

Sadie’s favorite spot while we had the Christmas tree up was on the tree skirt. It was the most adorable thing when she curled up into her tiny ball and slept. Unfortunately, I’m not so stealthy with the camera and every time I tried to take a picture of her sleeping I woke her up. Oh well!