Eiche fam

For the past couple years, we came to a decision when it comes to Christmas. It’s been our tradition to spend Christmas Day with Jessica’s side of the family, and we felt too rushed, on the morning of, to do our family stuff as well.

It’s been our tradition, the three of us, to make almond rolls and eat breakfast prior to opening any presents. So rather than try to squeeze in breakfast and presents before going over to Jessica’s sister’s house, we made the decision to celebrate Christmas on a different day. Last year, we celebrated our Christmas on the 26th. This year, we had to wait until the 29th — but as we like to say, anything worth having is worth waiting for.

And speaking of family: we also had a guest for our Christmas: one of Namine’s cousins. Jessica and I had already given her some gifts for the family Christmas, but we wanted to make sure she felt included, so we surprised her that morning with some more presents.

Not only do we like to put some thought into the gifts themselves, but I enjoy putting my artistic side toward the presentation as well. I’ve enjoyed dabbling in a little calligraphy this year, on the outside of one of Jessica’s presents:

This is a quote from Edgar Allan Poe, who Jessica enjoys as an author. Jessica had already received him in plushy form, so this gift, in continuing with the theme, was a large plush raven.

Jessica gave me two new Nerf guns, which we were excited to try out (and model).

We love to play board and card games, so we all gave each other plenty of those. After the opening was done, Namine and her cousin played a few of the different games. Shown here below are them playing Uno and including Jessica in a game of Rack-O.

You might have noticed that our setup for Christmas looks quite different than in years past. With Namine in the hospital recently, and us being unsure of her new surgery date, we opted to put up one of our little trees instead.

We know, perhaps better than most, that not everyone’s Christmas looks the same. Some have a traditional, living tree put up. Some have an artificial tree. Some, like us this year, simple have a small tree with little or no decorations. And some have no tree at all. Namine’s first Christmas, in fact, was spent in the hospital. She was scheduled to go home shortly before, but her oxygen began to dip dangerously — not completely unlike recently — and she was kept at the hospital.

Having decorations and a fully decked-out Christmas tree are nice, but that’s not the most important thing. Things, the location, those — when you get right down to it — are not the important thing. The truly important thing is having loved ones, being with loved ones. It sounds trite, but take it from a family who has been through health crises: the real gift is celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ with each other.