Family Hopping

One of the biggest changes that I'm simultaneously looking forward to and at the same time terrified about when we have kids is holiday planning.

Right now our current strategy for the holidays is something that I affectionately call Family Hopping. If you've ever seen the movie "Four Christmases" you probably understand. Josh and I are incredibly lucky in the fact that all of our immediate family lives in one town. Sure they live on separate sides of one town but they're fairly contained. Josh's parents are divorced so we usually hit up his mom's house, his dad's house and my parents for each holiday. 

This is how it's going to happen this year:

Tomorrow night (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) we'll be having dinner with my parents, grandparents, brother and sister at my parent's house.

 My parents (sorry for saving a picture that you hate, Mom!) and grandparents with Josh and I

 

On Thanksgiving day we will head up the mountain to have dinner with my father in law's family. There will be uncles, aunts and cousins galore.

 Josh's dad with us on our wedding day

Josh's mom and her side of the family celebrate Thanksgiving on the Saturday, 2 days after Thanksgiving day. This celebration will also be huge, with extended family included.  

 

Josh's dad and siblings on the left, mom's side and more siblings (plus cutest nephews ever) on the right 

 

And my favorite picture ever of me with my sweet brothers in law and husband

It's a similar story for Christmas. Celebrating with my parents the weekend before, Josh's mom Christmas Eve and morning and Josh's dad for the remainder of the day.

I like how we're able to (and work really hard at) including everyone in our holiday celebrating because I think that being around family during the holiday season is the whole point. However, it's gotten to the point where most of the time spent at any given stop feels like a minor pit stop before we move on to the next place. It's hard to really enjoy each individual family celebration and relax.

Last night Josh and I took a walk and were discussing how *hopefully* this will be our last pre-kids holiday season and how we foresee things changing. The changes probably won't happen when our first is an infant but once they are able to appreciate Christmas and understand at least partially what's going on we'd like to be at home. We want to be able to start traditions with our kids that they'll always remember and we don't want those memories to consist of just being hauled around until the point of exhaustion. I'm not sure how we'll maneuver those semi-far in the future holidays but I'm kind of looking forward to the change while at the same time enjoying the mobility that we have right now while it's just Josh and I.