Christmas Day 2015

Oh, Christmas...  Never in my life have I been seriously not excited (and yet, still kind of excited for Christmas).  I'm pretty sure I cried every day leading up to Christmas.  The thought of not waking up at my house on Christmas Day, not having the Christmas brunch or going to my grandfather's for Christmas dinner would bring me to tears every day.  There were honestly points where I thought we should pull a Christmas with the Kranks and just skip Christmas completely.

In the end, it turned out to be okay.  It was VERY different than normal, but different can be okay.  The day started out with a Turkish test, which I was less than pleased with.  I had tried to get it changed, but they rejected that for no reason, so Friday morning, I woke up and instead of opening stockings and presents, I took an exam.  Luckily, I passed, which was truly a Christmas miracle.  

When I got home, it was Christmas Day! We opened presents and stockings.  I had stuffed our stockings that we got in Strasbourg, but my mom (being the extremely thoughtful person that she is) sent us stockings, as well.  My mom definitely wins the prize for the better stocking stuffer.  Mine just has an orange, some koozies, some underwear and candy.  My mom definitely had more fun stuff, such as ear rings for me and gift cards for both us.   Santa came in the form of wrapped presents of stuff we ordered on Black Friday, which was funny.  

We spent the rest of the day watching Christmas movies and I took a nap.  We cooked a big Christmas dinner for the two of us including a turkey, delicious salad all for me, and rosemary sweet potatoes.  We finished off the meal with cheesecake and lots of lots of wine. We even tried mulling wine, which didn't turn out that bad. I'm sure we'll be making it again sometime.

I'm only posting this because I know Uncle Morgan has no idea what a blog is. 

  Christmas Day was actually nice.  I enjoyed spending the day with Mike and making a big Christmas dinner. We got to FaceTime with a bunch of friends and family. It was really hard being away from home, moreso during the weeks leading up to the big day, but it turned out to be a nice, small Christmas Day.  Throughout the day, I tried to remind myself that there will (most likely) be Christmases where Mike is gone and that we should savor this day, which we definitely did.   It wasn't my favorite Christmas, but it was a happy day and I think that's a wonderful gift.

Merry Christmas from Izmir!

Questions for you....

• What Christmas traditions do you have with your family/significant other?  Mike and I are trying to come up with some traditions that we can do every year, despite where we are.  
• How do you do gifts with your spouse?  We did gifts this year and were both stressed out trying to find each other gifts.  We are thinking of putting a $20 price limit on it or doing each other's stockings instead or something a little different than just gifts.

Scout's favorite Christmas present was the ribbon and the wrapping paper, although he probably deserved a little bit of coal, as well.