Christmas Appreciation Post: What has made me happy this month

What’s up, my Grinches! I am all types of emotional this holiday season. I am literally going to cry writing this post, but I needed to jump on and just share what made me happy this month. All these things have melted my lil ol’ Resting Grinch face. So let me share my Christmas appreciation post.

Plus a little game of “how many Christmas puns are in this post?” Comment below to see if you guess right!

If you don’t find them all Yule be sorry. It’s the most Pun-derful time of the year!

Christmas Appreciation Post

You snow the drill! It is that time of year where we get nostalgic and feeling our feelings. Oh, boy I am all in my feelings. This is probably the most Christmasy I have felt in years. I am overflowing with joy and excitement.

It’s a time of giving, so don’t be elfish! When it comes to the holidays I want to create an everlasting memory that you will never forget. I love the holiday season deerly.

Christmas Cards

For years now I have been saying I want to send out Christmas cards. Nothing over the top… you know. We weren’t taking a family portrait like the Kardashians. I just wanted to send a cute card with something meaningful or funny written in it.

And for years I never did it. Either because I didn’t have the money to or I just straight up forgot. However, this year I had the money to buy the cards and the stamps. I made the conscious decision that it was important to me because I am all for showing my appreciation and gratitude for others. I even designed a cute Christmas address design to print on my envelopes.

It made me so happy to send out the cards and have my friends message telling me that they got it. I had one friend message me and tell me she was having a rough day and she receives a great deal of comfort from the message I wrote on her card.

That made me cry when I read it.

I would have used the facetime screenshot but it was an unflattering photo of my sister and she would have killed me. 😀

Facetime Calls

Since my sister and nephews moved from Florida to South Carolina it has been hard to keep in contact, but my sister and I text, call, and video chat whenever we can. The other night we spent 2 hours on video chat talking about anything and everything. Sleigh queen, sleigh. We had a blast, but it’s not the same as in person.

Both my sister and I have come to realize living in different states does not work for us. Time to spruce things up. So, In the next year or so something will be changing. Mike and I want to move out of Florida soon. It might have to be South Carolina or meet somewhere in the middle! lol

Phone Calls

Since my family moved I haven’t really had one on one conversations with my nephews. You know they are young and don’t need to be spending hours on the phone with their lame Aunt. However, I sent my oldest nephew Matthew a personal Christmas card with a cute little message and he called me to thank me for it.

He was driving from their house to Columbus 3 hours away and we ended up talking for 2 hours straight. He got to where he was going, did what he had to do, and then called me back to talk the whole 3-hour ride home. We talked about anything and everything. It made me so happy and time just flew by it did not seem like we talked for 5 hours. That is the best gift I could have ever gotten.

I don’t know if he knows how much that made my day, but Matthew if you are reading this… I am showing my Christmas Appreciation… Words cannot express how happy that made me. I love you a whole watt!

Christmas Dinner

With this pandemic going on I have really only left my house to go grocery shopping and in 8 months one twice did I go to Goodwill. In August our car died so we couldn’t even take scenic car drives. Being home for this long I have had nothing to look forward to.

Before Covid and the car issue, we were rarely home on the weekends. We always had something planned. Going for a hike on some trail, swimming in the spring or going to some festival, carnival thing in our city.

To say it has been a little lonely. Mikayla hasn’t been able to come over since again we don’t have a car. We decided to invite Mike’s parents over for thanksgiving which was a blast and ended up extending an invitation to stay the night at our house for family dinner and open presents. His mother was so excited about coming to hang out all night. That we also asked them if they could bring Mikayla over the week prior to spent time with us. Let’s get elf-ed up!

They happily agreed to bring her over and they would bring her home when they came over for Christmas. Having that to look forward to has really made me happy. It brings excitement to my days counting down to celebrate the holiday. Christmas Appreciation to Mike’s Mom Carole and Alan.

Buying Presents

This one is a biggy that started this whole Christmas Appreciation post. Mike and I have not bought Christmas presents for each other since 2012. Our first Christmas together. I still use the hairdryer he got me 8.5 years later.

I have talked about before that Mike and I worked at a hotel making minimum wage the whole time we worked there. Which were 4 years for me and 3 for Mike.

I bring this up because we were barely making ends meet. Our goal for Christmas was to make the best memories we could for Mikayla. I would buy gifts for her throughout the year to save for Christmas.

At the time, I was okay with not getting gifts I wanted Mikayla to have the best time. So mike and I put ourselves on the back burner. Sleigh, what? Say it ain’t snow!!!

Until this year

Mike has worked his ass off to move up in his line of work and make more money. In which he has. But wait—there’s myrrh… We had enough money to buy not only Christmas gifts for each other, but Mikayla, his mom and stepdad, My sister and 2 nephews.

We have never been able to do that. Can I get a watt watt? I know! It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. It’s snow joke. It wasn’t a lot but we thought long and hard and tried to make the purchases mean something that they would all use.

Mike thank you from the bottom of my heart for providing for this family. I love you from head to mistletoe. It was love at frost sight. Forever and always I will be pine-ing for you.

Christmas Appreciation Post

It has been a wild year, but these 5 simple things have meant so much more to me than anything I could have received. Yes, presents are nice, but receiving people’s time and affection makes my resting grinch face melt. You guys sleigh me.

Raise your glass and give A mistle-toast to the holiday season. We came, We thawed, We conquered. Make it rein in your loved ones’ lives and show the true meaning of Christmas. If you don’t I just have to say How rude-olph of you?

As for me and my family… I’ll never fir-get this Christmas.

Until next time, Have a great day and go Treat yo’elf!