Nakita Grinie

Tag Santa drama and bitter cold

Although I'm usually a party pooper when it comes to being tagged, I decided to follow through with this one. Lauren over at LiveLaughLove tagged me to talk about our Christmas Traditions.
This is our second married Christmas we've spent together and our seventh as a couple! Wow. Even though we've logged many holidays together we have yet to nail down actual traditions as a couple. After all, when one set of our parents live 8 hours away it always make the holidays a little more hectic. It's not like we get to stop by both parents' houses on Christmas day...we have some decisions to make, people!

This year we chose to stay in Milwaukee for Thanksgiving, Missouri for Christmas and then New Years back in Milwaukee for a belated Christmas celebration.

Also, we are continuing the 'yearly ornament' tradition that both of our mothers did for us as kids. They gave us one ornament per year of our lives and we now have an ornament for each year of marriage. Give us a few more years and our Christmas tree will look like ornaments puked all over the branches. But that puke will be full of memories so I'm all about it.

I'm bound and determined to send Christmas cards to our friends and family each year and so far so good. I freely admit to spending way too much time on the handmade ones from our first two years of marriage together and will definitely utilize some of the fabulous online stores in the future. At least I'm realistic, right?

In my family we ALWAYS opened all of our gifts on Christmas morning. This meant that my brother and I would wake up at the crack of dawn and bug my parents until they woke up. However, Nate's family opened most of their gifts on Christmas Eve which meant that he and his brother stayed up really late to enjoy the plethora of boyish toys they received as gifts. They also opened a few gifts specifically from 'Santa' on Christmas Day, so I guess they got the best of both worlds. Are you a Christmas Day or Christmas Eve gift opener? Such strong beliefs behind both choices, I know.

Which brings me to my question: did your parents let you believe in Santa?

Mine did not simply because they didn't want my brother and I to forget that Jesus is the reason for the season, not Santa. Also, my mom didn't want to lie to us about Santa only to see us get let down once we found out it was a hoax [I hope I'm not spoiling this for any of my readers out there:) ] You know, the whole honesty thing they teach kids these days.

Nate's parents did let the boys believe in Santa and sure enough, they turned out just fine. I realize it's harmless and most families let their kids dream of the big fat guy in red. But I'm just not sure I want to go that route with our future children. I certainly didn't miss it and still loved Christmas time with all my heart. Any thoughts on this one?


And finally, me and Mother Nature need to sit down and have a talk. This is just ridiculous. As if our foot of snow wasn't enough, it snowed AGAIN on Saturday night---another 2-4 inches or something. Whatever, no big deal. But then the crazy biyatch sent this our way:

Negative temperatures......not even counting the windchill? Seriously? I forgot that it could even be less than 0 degrees outside but thanks for the reminder M.N. [that's Mother Nature, in case you were wondering.] The wind is blowing so hard it's getting up to 40 mph at times and it's so freaking cold that it literally takes my breath away. The temperature gauge said -8 today when I drove to work and I actually had to chuckle at the sight. This was after I scraped both the outside and inside of my windows for almost 30 minutes. Did you know you might have to scrape the inside of your car when it gets this bad? It was news to me.

35 below zero is a horrible place to be--I know I mentioned that the 20s were rough but I retract that statement altogether. It was in the 20s on Friday, the day of our blizzard, and I was perfectly content to hang around outside and take pictures all day long. I yearn for the 20s again and if the weather is over 32 degrees in Missouri I vow to enjoy the warmth with outside runs. True story. I might even bring shorts and sunscreen:)


Did I mention that I'm excited to go home for the holidays? Tuesday night, baby. I cannot wait.