Good morning! I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful weekend and had a very Merry Christmas if you were celebrating yesterday!
Ryan and I have been immersed in family fun. I wish I was back in college and had another full week off to enjoy everyone. At least I have retirement to look forward to. 😉
Now it’s time to get caught up… Let’s back up a bit and begin with Christmas Eve!
As the sun was setting, Ryan, my mom, dad, grandma, sister and I piled into my mom’s minivan and headed to church. 
We attended a children’s service, where they told the Christmas story using sounds and enjoyed watching the wonderment on the children’s faces.
Once the service had concluded, we came back to my parents’ house for a special Christmas Eve dinner. My mom prepared a seafood feast complete with crab legs and soft-shell crabs. 
After dinner, my mom passed around our first gifts of Christmas. Every Christmas Eve we all get new pajamas and this year was no different. My sister and I were matching… as usual. 😉 
We quickly changed into our new pajamas and bundled up for our traditional Christmas Eve boat ride.
I think my sister was a little chilly…
With our boat decorated in Christmas lights, we headed up and down canals while looking at the beautifully decorated boats and docks and said “Merry Christmas” to people as they ran outside to wave hello.
I think Sadie Claus thought she was the captain. 
Once the boat ride was over, we came inside, ate some Christmas cookies and made some last minute Christmas gift preparations.
Christmas Day
We awoke bright and early on Christmas morning! 
Ryan and I had two stockings… my family’s and our own couple stockings to each other.
We opened our stockings while enjoying a hot breakfast of cheese puff casserole (an egg, cheese and ham-based casserole) and my favorite monkey bread.
It took us a couple of hours to get through all of our Christmas gifts. We all agreed that we had a wonderful Christmas!
Once all of our gifts were opened, my mom reminded us that one remained… The pickle present.
Every year when we put out cookies and milk for Santa, we also leave him a pickle ornament to hang on the tree in a hard-to-find place. Then, after all of the Christmas presents are opened on Christmas morning, my sister and I search for the pickle ornament on the tree. The person who finds it then gets the very last gift… the pickle present.
This year was an especially hard year. Santa got pretty crafty with the ornament, wrapping the it in pine needles! 
My sister was the lucky winner this year. Victory will be mine next year!
We spent the day enjoying our gifts, spending time together and prepping Christmas dinner.
Ryan’s family arrived at my parents’ house a little after 4 p.m. to enjoy some appetizers, dinner and dessert with all of us.
It felt like Christmas all over again when Ryan’s mom arrived with two large bags full of presents! She did a wonderful job and Ryan and I loved all of our gifts.
After Christmas Round Two, it was dinner time! 
My mom prepared a delicious dinner of beef tenderloin, twice-baked potatoes and green beans with almonds. Ryan’s mom provided a broccoli and cauliflower salad with bacon and pecans that I absolutely loved!
Dessert was also fantastic.
We had red velvet cake with ice cream, whipped cream and my mom’s homemade chocolate sauce. Phenomenal! You can’t go wrong with cake and ice cream.
It felt great to have my two families together for Christmas! I’m so glad Ryan’s family could join us and make the evening extra special.
Eventually we hugged Ryan’s family goodbye and settled in for the night to watch Christmas Vacation before bed.
I was super tired and fell asleep halfway through the movie.
It was a wonderful Christmas! My first one as a married woman. 😀
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That pickle game is too fun! I love hearing other people’s little traditions. The boat ride sounds like such a good time too. Although I’m not a fan of your choice of blanket.
hahaha i knew some gator haters would surface out there. in my defense, it is my sister’s blanket.
Merry Christmas, Julie! Your Christmas celebration with your family looks absolutely wonderful. Don’t you just love this time of year?!
Merry Christmas!! It looks like you had a fantastic holiday 🙂
looks like a great time! but the real issue is: did you get your tory burch flats?! 😉
nooooo. but i did get a lot of lovely presents! even w/o the flats it was a wonderful christmas!
Looks like you had a awesome christmas!
I love how close your falmily is!
Merry Christma Julie!:)
just thought of something… i got money from my grandma & ryan’s grandma… thinking those flats WILL be mine.
There’s a holiday sale going on today!
http://www.toryburch.com/images/c9/1_67.jpg
that’s my girl. i don’t want to tell you how many pairs i have :X the heels are good too! they’re short stack heels so one can actually walk in them!
i love the idea of a pickle gift . . . so fun. this was my first married christmas . . . doesn’t it feel lovely?
Looks like a GREAT Christmas full of family fun! 🙂
Your hair looks SUPER cute in the first picture! 🙂
And I love the Gator blanket. 😉
Merry Christmas Julie! Looks like a fun time.
Hi Julie! Ive been reading for a while now and just started a blog so I thought i’d comment! Looks like an amazing first Christmas..im loving the pickle game 🙂
What a great holiday! I love hearing about other people’s traditions. My friend in CA has crab legs on Christmas Eve too! I’d never heard of doing that up north. We do have the pickle ornament though! So funny! =)
hahaa love the pickle ornament idea! merry christmas juless!!
Merry Christmas Julie! Looks like you had a wonderful holiday. I wish we could do a boat ride up here on our lake too, but Canada is a wee bit to cold to try that…and the ice might prove to be a problem. Its nice to see different traditions though. Enjoy the rest of the time with your family 🙂
Everything looks super delicious! Monkey bread brings me back to the good ol days…that stuff is like crack!
Happy New Year!
That red velvet cake looks PHENOMONAL! YUM! Looks like you had a wonderful time! Merry Christmas Julie! =)
Wishing you a very merry (belated) Christmas, dear Julie!
All of that food looks sooo good!!!!!!!!
We do the pickle ornament, too!!!! =D
what a fun holiday! 🙂
Looks like a great time!
I love the Christmas cruise tradition- what a fun thing to do when you live near the ocean!! As for the Tory flats, I say go for it- they’re so worth it 🙂
aw..my mom does the same thing with the pj’s! 😀
Really like the idea of the pickle present. That’s cute!
Sounds like such wonderful traditions! My friend just told me about the pickle tradition and I was so interested that she bought me my first pickle ornament for Christmas this year. I can’t wait to start the tradition with my family next year.
Monkey bread is a Christmas tradition of my family as well! Hope you enjoyed it!
Mmmm that monkey bread looks awesome! Glad you had a good Christmas 🙂 Sadie looks great in her Sadie Claus outfit!
Such a nice day! My family watched Christmas vacation as well. It’s a classic!
Your Christmas looked wonderful! 🙂 I love Sadie in her outfit. She is super cute! 🙂
Merry Christmas! Love your beige blazer in the first picture – where did you get it?
My grandma gives all of us Pajamas to wear every Christmas Eve night as well!! I love the blazer you wore to church buttt I’m not feeling the blanket you used on the boat! FSU baby!! Looks like you had a wonderful Christmas 🙂
I absolutely love the idea of the pickle present! I JUST talked about pickles in my latest post and how I prettymuch had a Christmas pickle binge haha oh wow, enouhg pickle talk 😉
I’m so glad you were able to enjoy your Christmas with BOTH families, how special! Beautiful people all around 🙂 Much love to you and your family, Julie!
Great pics! Hey – do you mind telling us where you got those jeans? They look like bootcut jeans or even flare, and I am always looking for nice fitting ones since I’m not a skinny jeans fan (for myself, that is).
sure! they’re ernest sewn jeans… i bought them on sale through rue lala. (http://www.ruelala.com/invite/jbream726) i LOVE them!
Im glad you and Ryan had such a wonderful first Christmas together as a married couple. It all looks amazing!
Looks like you had fun! I LOVEE seafood, so I’m a little jealous of that feast you had there! Hahaa 😛
We also have Santa hide the pickle–but instead, whoever finds the pickle gets to open their present first!
Nate just saw the monkey bread photo…now i’ll never be off the hook til i make it for him!
I ate monkey bread on Christmas morning too! Yumm! Now I am all sugar-ed out….
Ha! I love the pickle tradition. I know our family has our unique share of holiday traditions (whoever gets to put the star on top is kinda a big deal…even though we’re all in our twenties now!).
And I sympathize with the Christmas sugar rush. I made my honeybun cake and was hyped until late into the evening.
I love Christmas! I’m so glad you and Ryan enjoyed yours. 🙂
Your mom looks so beautiful in the picture where she is standing in behind your dad by the dinner table! Sounds like Christmas was amazing!
Barbara
OH MY GOSH!!! Monkey Bread (which my family calls ‘The Explosion’ because of how it exploded in the oven the year we spent in Colorado) is a HUGE tradition for us. I LOVE IT!
I love how close both yours and Ryans familys are.. Thats awesome! I Hope my families will join together seamlessly like your guys.
Woohoo! Glad to see someone else enjoys monkey bread for breakfast on Christmas…it’s one of my family’s traditions 🙂
A more recent blog post led me to this one, and I was wondering if you could share when you got your personalized stockings (the ones that were on the red chair)? They look like the could be from Land’s End or L.L. Bean.
pottery barn kids! 🙂 i bought them 2 years ago after christmas when they were on mega sale!
I love mega sales! I’ll have to take a look at Pottery Barn Kids this holiday season for something similar. I would have never thought to check there. Thanks for responding and letting me know!
I adore monkey bread. As a “young professional” (aka poor college grad) I get overly pampered on trips home, and tgis usually I.cludes monkey bread or sausage gravy!