Well, ready or not, Christmas is here!!  The most exciting time of the year!!  And the most hectic. This week, a few of us Blended Bloggers are sharing favorite Christmas Memories.  I've been thinking about this post forever!!  It's really hard to pinpoint one specific Christmas memory.  Rather, my memories are strung together like the lights around the Christmas tree.  Over the years, Christmas has changed and grown...always for the better!  The years have faded into one another, but it's always been, first and foremost, a day with family and celebrating the birth of Jesus!

When I was a little girl, Christmas Eve was always spent at my Nana and Pops' house, where they'd bring their big Santa sack out filled with gifts for all us kids.
Then we'd head out to Christmas Eve mass.  For a few years we went to the most beautiful Christmas Mass at my sisters' high school.  Before the mass, they had an hour of Christmas carols and hymns sung by students and alumni. I loved going to this mass.  I have always wanted to go back there and unfortunately we never have!  These days I'm the Christmas Eve hostess, so we go to my church, but I miss the big mass and that beautiful choir!

Christmas Day was always spent with my Nanny and Poppy at their house where we'd have a nice Christmas dinner and sing songs around their player piano!  In yesterday's TBB post I mentioned that my family had burst out singing Christmas carols together last year, and how I never remembered that happening.  I had forgotten about the singing with the player piano when I was younger.  But it was never Christmas carols...it was usually traditional irish tunes and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown...HA!!

Christmas morning in a house of four little girls was filled with fun toys, lots of gifts and a big "something" taking up half the room...be it a bike, a kitchen, set, tents, etc.  When we got older, the gifts changed but the mornings never did...it was always loud and fun!!  With lots of wrapping paper basketball and Christmas music as our soundtrack.  It was only when my three sisters were married, and it was just my mom, dad and I, that the mornings got quieter!  But we added coffee and mimosas to our morning tradition!


As the years have passed, husbands, and kids have been added, and our immediate family is now 21 on Christmas day!  So you can imagine how crazy and wild THAT is.  But now my memories focus on the kids.  There is nothing like seeing Christmas through a child's eyes!  The smiles, the toys, the oohhs and aahhs, etc. With so many nieces and nephews to buy for, for the last couple of years, my sisters and brother-in-laws and I do a Secret Santa!  What a trip!  We always have give clues about our person before handing out the gift...and that gets silly!   And another tradition we recently started, is wearing pjs all day on Christmas Day.  I'm not kidding...this might be my favorite.  LOL

I feel like Christmas day always flies by.  It's such a build up and in a blink, it's over!!  I wish sometimes I could stop time!  But I always enjoy the day!   It's a day of lots of laughs, reminiscing and just being together as a family!!  I wish all a day that's much the same.

Have a Blessed Christmas and a Happy 2016!!