Christmas was good! We had our usual schedule--I went to the Bourque's on Christmas Eve, stayed and opened gifts with his parents on Christmas morning, and then we went to my aunt's Christmas afternoon, and me and Philip had our Christmas together Christmas evening. It's kind of a lot; I can't imagine what the holidays are like when you have double the parents to visit or if you have kids.

We had a good meal Christmas Eve in Hanna City and we opened gifts with the girls (Philip's nieces, Briana and Faith). I was pretty nervous because I had put a little something together to ask them to be our flower girls. Opening gifts with Briana and Faith is kind of chaotic because they have so many presents to open. I was afraid that my gifts would get lost and/or it wouldn't be that big of a deal to them, but I wanted it to be memorable. I was so happy because it went just as I wanted it to go...

Briana started opening her gift before Faith did, so I had to slow her down. I had filled the box with fake flower petals and they all went flying. It took Briana a second to read what the frame said and her reaction was priceless. She ran over to hug us; it was so adorable.

And then Faith came a few seconds later. They were genuinely excited, so it was special.

Then I was waiting for Brooke (Philip's sister) to open her gift. Again, I wished that I would've taken a picture of what I made. I bought this necklace from The Limited...

... put it in a box, with a little background that I printed out that said "Brooke, Will you B my bridesmaid?" The "B" was the necklace. Does that make sense? It was pretty cute. I was proud of myself for being sort of creative with it. Anyway, she opened it and seemed really surprised and excited. It was fun.

Christmas night is always fun; it's kind of like the culmination of Christmas because often Philip and I get each other gifts that we really want and we obviously know each other well, so sometimes there are gifts that we love but were also surprised about. I got Philip these two little books from a store in Chicago...

A couple days after Christmas we filled them out and then "scored" each other. It took awhile! We both got 24 wrong about each other (out of 100)! So funny that we got the same score! It was fun and we learned things about one another!

I feel like I want to be in full-fledged wedding planning mode because I haven't done much lately... really nothing at all during December. I'm trying to adhere pretty closely to the website I'm using to plan (Wedding Wire) and there are only a few things this month. I'm sure eventually I'll regret wanting things to do!

Happy 2012! 
This year's going to be awesome!

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