Heart is a Mailbox: Christmas Events

Here are my Christmas festivities that took place this season. A nice slough of photos to rightly depict this past holiday. Can Christmas already be over? I always feel sad after Christmas, longing for the season to come back soon. Christmas was absolutely magical this year. It was my 4th Christmas being away from my family, which is always hard. But I was lucky to be with my In-Laws. They are so great. I feel so blessed to have great family on both sides! Also, it was Ryan's and my first Christmas together. He was so sweet and detailed and really sought to make our first Christmas special. I felt so blessed to have the most important of gifts in my life: the gospel, family, and my most darling husband. These are my most favorite of gifts and I feel like one lucky girl.

I hope you all had magical Christmas. May we all carry the spirit of Christ all year around and seek to lift those around us wherever we go.

Without further ado, here are the photos of the season:

First, I present to you, The Festival of the Nativities that my church put together. It was absolutely beautiful. I loved looking at all the unique types of nativities and felt reverence for Mary and Joseph as they helped to bring our Savior into the world.

My work put together quite the elaborate Christmas party. During which, Ryan and I won hermit crab races! This particular activity, everyone picked out a hermit crab, they put them in the middle, and they would run to the outside of the ring. Both of our hermit crabs made it to the top round and out of it, we were granted two tickets, in which we could enter a raffle for various sorts of prizes. We ended up winning two Jerry Seinfeld tickets for March which valued 80 bucks a piece. We beat the odds with our single measly ticket. We were quite shocked!

(Forgive the fact that Ryan's eyes are closed.)

I played Pandora's radio station religiously throughout the season. Free Christmas music? Yes please!

We were able to make it to the Orlando Temple during the Christmas season. It was great to be able to participate in service while feeling the spirit of the Lord. I love this place. Plus, check out their nativity!

We had a date night at Barnes and Nobles where we read children's Christmas stories to each other. We found some pretty terrible ones, but some pretty awesome ones all the same. Afterward, we got hot chocolate at B&N's Café and drove around to look at the Christmas lights! Quite magical, if you ask me, and perhaps a new tradition is in store?

Here we are opening some Christmas gifts...Ryan continued my family's tradition of pj's and an ornament on Christmas Eve, while I bought him one of his family's traditions of reading the Polar Express every Christmas Eve.

This is a gift tag that my father-in-law made out to my mother-in-law. Hilarious.

So, uh...Ryan completely surprised me with Disney World tickets for our upcoming anniversary in two weeks! Quite the shock and quite the excitement! I've been dying to go since we've been here, and welp! Soon enough, Disney world, watch out!!!