The Holidays!

It was exciting for David and I to have our first holiday together...Thanksgiving! We were mostly settled but we chose to order a Thanksgiving dinner from The Cracker Barrel. We had all of the traditional foods and took it to the big lake that is close to Killeen. It was a beautiful day and it was very fun to have that meal together.

After Thanksgiving, Christmas came too soon. We found out that David would be able to take leave and that meant that we would be going to Idaho for the holidays! That made David very excited because it would be the first Christmas where he would be with his family in the last three years. Much to my dismay, the only way we would be getting to Idaho would be driving. That was the longest drive of my life! We left Killeen around eight o'clock on a Friday and arrived in Boise around 9:30 the next night. We kind of lied to our parents about our arrival time and surprised them all at my parent's house a few hours before they thought we were supposed to be there. It was so fun to see everyone! We both were so happy to be home so we partied and played some beer pong with everyone! It was a blast.

Throughout the next two weeks, we switched our time between Boise and Emmett. It was very exciting for me to see how David's family celebrates Christmas and their traditions. I found that I was having so much fun with two families. The Christmas festivities made me realize that I actually have a new family and that meant more friendships. It's all very exciting.

On Christmas Eve, we had both sets of parents at my parent's house and had some great food and went to go look at Christmas lights. David and I were starting to get super sick so looking at lights had been cut short but once we were back to the house, we opened presents!! It was fun watching our families faces as they opened their gifts from us. And we also loved all of the presents we recieved! We're so grateful! Then on Christmas Day, we went out to Emmett and spent the day with David's family. That was a lot of fun getting to talk and catch up with all of the cousins. David's family has a tradition where a lump of coal is given to a family member who has had a hard year or who the family is very proud of and David got it this year! It was a very emotional moment for the whole family but I loved seeing it and learning about this tradition which is new to me.

For New Year's, we were supposed to go out to Tanza's (our cousin) house to celebrate. But earlier that day, my car mysteriously broke down. The guys worked on it for a whole day and little did we know, it was only out of gas. That was definitely my bad. But it gave us a good reason to be home for an extra day!

We started driving back home early on the second. This trip was a lot longer but I actually let David rest and drove for a few hours. We finally got back into Texas on the third around noon. It felt good to be home and get back to the normal grind of every day life!