Old and New Holiday Traditions

I have always been a sucker for holiday traditions. I just love them. I love spending time at my own house over the holidays, but Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without spending time at my parents' and grandparents' houses and in Vicksburg, too. If anyone has ever been married and has tried to split up holiday time in two separate cities, I feel for you. It's NEVER easy, no matter how many years you've been doing it. I think that's where the holiday stress comes in without a doubt, but it's all worth it.

Here are a few of my favorite Christmas photos and traditions...

Christmas at Granny and Pap's... Nothing says holiday memories more to me than spending Christmas Eve at my Gran and Pap's house in front of their beautiful tree and fireplace. Granny is a Christmas Day baby, so we've always just done our holiday celebration on Christmas Eve. We play Elvis Christmas albums on the record-player and open presents sitting on the floor. I just love it.

Speaking of Granny, when I was growing up she always had a HUGE Christmas Eve party in the afternoon where family friends would stop by for a couple of hours. When I was a little girl, this party seemed to last F-O-R-E-V-E-R because I was waiting on everyone to leave so that Santa would come to fill our stockings (he did the big Christmas gifts at my parents - just stockings for my parents and me at Granny's). In reality, the party only lasted from like 3 to 5 or something like that.

Anyways, I'm following in Granny's tradition of Christmas party hosting. Our third annual Dirty Santa/Tacky Christmas Party (the first year wasn't tacky) is this weekend, and I'm so excited! We had entirely too much fun last year, and the photo above is just a glimpse of the craziness. Fun times!

The Grey Family Christmas... this photo was taken a couple of years ago at a Christmas party at Katie's house, but we very rarely get a good pic of all of us, so here you go. Being an only child, I love being part of a big extended family. I love watching Ryan Hadley open gifts and can't wait to celebrate future holidays with more little Grey/Ferrell babies running around.

Our annual Grey-Gor Christmas Dinner with Drew and Kristin... this pic wasn't actually from Christmas, obviously. It was from my birthday weekend in New Orleans, but the Gorneys are one of our absolute favorite couples to do ANYTHING with. We have so much fun with them, and everytime we get together my sides hurt from laughing so much. Tomorrow night is our third annual Grey-Gor Christmas Dinner. This year we're going to Parker House, but we've done Shapley's and Ely's in years past. It's just a fun thing to do right before the Christmas craziness hits!

Christmas morning with Baby Brady... He's not so much of a baby now, but last year we started a little tradition of walking across the street on Christmas morning in our pajamas and having coffee (with a little Bailey's added) with Ben, Tina and Brady. This was him last year, his very first Christmas, and it was so special. This year he's running around like crazy, so I can't wait to see him open some presents. I love being around kids at Christmas, and this year he may even be old enough for his first Santa visit. :)

If I haven't bored you by now, stick around in the coming weeks for all the holiday wrap-up posts. And if you haven't guessed or if you haven't already read it a thousand times, this is my FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR!