In our opinions, one of the great things about being married is that we get to celebrate Christmas so many times! To kick things off, I had a fun day at school on Friday getting loads of sweet gifts. One thing that our school does that I HIGHLY recommend is this: One parent on each grade level sends out an e-mail letting the other parents know that they will be collecting donations. The money is then equally divided between the teachers and presented to us in a Visa gift card from the entire grade level. We love it!! Waaaay better than 64 apple ornaments. Of course, we still get our share of sugary treats, but we are so thankful for such a useful gift. We concluded the day with another Christmas gift- a one-hour early release due to threats of a snowstorm (which we didn’t get).
When I got home, Zach and I celebrated our Christmas by exchanging presents and watching a Christmas movie. Some people gave us a hard time for celebrating early, but we’ve done it this way for the past few years and really enjoy getting to kick off our Christmas break with something so exciting. We had each already gotten our big gifts as we had used Christmas money and other money we had saved up. Zach got a PS3 and I got a chair for our living room (from Craigslist, of course). I also got him two NC State flags for the house which I was super excited about. When I went to the campus bookstore to get him one, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the whole store was 40% off. There were no flags on the floor, but thanks to the help of a kind storeworker and a ladder, I was able to get the display models (since they were such a great price, I got both to make sure I got the one he would want). Zach got me a steam mop which I have been dorkily excited about since Thanksgiving (the middle schoolers think it’s hilarious that I asked for a mop for Christmas) and my drug of choice- Diet Dr. Pepper. That night, my dad and I celebrated an annual tradition by going to see Carolina Ballet’s The Nutcracker. The day was the perfect kickoff to Christmas break!
