To be honest, coming into the Christmas season, I was pretty disappointed to be so far away from home and missing all of the fun, festive things we usually do at Christmas-time in Texas. It's difficult not to feel left out when all of the things that became traditions for us still occured without us. So while we very much missed being home in Texas for Christmas (the entire month of December really), we celebrated here in New York together.
One thing about December in New York- there's snow on the ground. Snow totally makes it feel more like Christmas. Our first real snowfall happened on December 1 during the work day. I freaked out, and asked my boss if we were all supposed to go home. After about a weeklong reality check, I realized that snowplows actually work pretty well and that it's best to wear gloves when scraping ice off your car. I've learned that windshield wiper fluid can actually freeze and that if in doubt, I should wear my snow boots and not my regular shoes outside.
So while snow makes you feel like it's Christmas outside, it definitely adds more hassle to life. Justin has become an excellent snow shoveler, which I appreciate more than I can explain.
We continued our tradition of baking Christmas cookies and decorating them. We also watched Elf about 4 or 5 times this month!
I think this picture is funny because we're both supposed to be holding our "favorite cookie". Justin picked up the ugliest one from the bunch.
Bella really enjoyed her first Christmas. She had no idea why she kept getting new toys, but seemed to love them all. I tried to get her all toys that I thought she couldn't chew up. This one was torn to pieces in less than 15 minutes. Fail...
Justin and I got dressed up only once, for the Johnson Business School Winter Formal. The semi-formal was held on Cornell's campus right after a talent show called the "Johnson Jollies". However, I had picked up some kind of bug from work that week, so we actually didn't even make it to the dance...just the talent show. Overall a fun night, and Bella totally wanted to go, but I wish I would have felt up to dancing.
Here's me and Lindsay, Laura, Virginia and Sarah after the talent show and before the dance. Should have gotten a picture of the guys but maybe next time.
So we definitely didn't have a packed schedule full of things to do for the month of December, but we did enjoy our time together. We also got to spend Christmas Day in New York City with my parents, which was absolutely perfect (blog to come on that). I won't lie, I miss that we didn't get to attend some of our normal Christmas events, but I'm content about it. One way that I'm looking at it is that because we didn't have so many events going on, we were able to be more still this holiday season than we've ever been before. Instead of running from party to party and getting stressed about finding the perfect Christmas gifts for everyone, we were able to focus more clearly this year on what the reality of Christmas is.
It is so easy to focus on the holiday and not on our Lord, and I am guilty of it. Please don't let the commercialization of Christmas overshadow the humility of Jesus becoming a baby to be our Savior. Please don't let stress overpower your life at Christmas, so that you're too busy to sit at the feet of Jesus and thank Him for making a way for us to be reconciled to Him. Please don't think that attending Christmas parties is more important than knowing Christ. We hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas...and thank you to everyone for sending us Christmas cards. We loved hearing from you and seeing your families!
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