This year, I vowed to get ahead of the game before the holidays. With so much going on personally and professionally, I didn’t want the holidays to be a huge last minute stress canyon, so I started shopping and planning early and took advantage of Black Friday sales for the first time ever. Not only did I get most of my holiday shopping done (while saving money), but I ordered our Christmas cards and saved a bundle. Since I was so ahead of the game, I planned to have our Christmas card photos taken by a profesh like we did last year, but at the last minute, I decided not to.
On the weekend I’d planned to do it, it was unseasonable freezing and frankly, I didn’t have the energy last month. The fertility treatments, changes at work, and trying to keep up with all the holiday parties, gifts, and James’ constant development has just been overwhelming. While I still want us to take profesh photos as a yearly way to mark our families growth, I also felt like this photo best encapsulates our family and what we want to share on our card. It has all four of us (Dakota included!), we’re smiling and having fun and I think probably wearing our pajamas under our coats after eating way too many pancakes. It’s the us that I love and I wanted to share that with the people we love this year.
This has been a tough year as we’ve struggled to grow our family. I started off the year full of hope that I would be pregnant soon, and it’s hard for me not to feel sad thinking of how we are closing out this year without another baby and with a Christmas card of just four (never forget Dakota!). I felt like a perfectly styled and posed card (and don’t get me wrong, I love those and still plan to do them in the future) would have been a lie in some way – we’re not perfect and this year has been far from it. Like everyone, we have our struggles and infertility has been one of the hardest things we’ve been through. But we are so lucky to have such an amazing little boy in James and the cutest dog in the world (sorry, but come on!) and Saturday morning pancakes followed by walks around the lake.
And we’re off to Park City to celebrate the holidays with family and friends and hopefully enjoy a white snowy Christmas! And really, there’s nowhere I’d rather be for the holidays.
I hope you and your family have a very merry perfectly imperfect Christmas! After all, those are the best kinds, right?
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