2015 Christmas Recap VLOG!
We always, ALWAYS get asked… so where were you for Christmas break? And we reply with, The short version? Visiting family.
The week of Christmas and New Year’s has turned into something of a full-fledged road trip tradition, as we hit three families multiple times and spend over a week away from home, living out of our suitcases and flying wherever the snow takes us. We’ve started calling it our Winter Tour. 🙂 You can see last year’s recap here.
Balancing time between three families (Mitch’s parents are divorced and both remarried to incredible people so we have the privilege of coming from three amazing families) is somewhat of a jigsaw puzzle and I’m not going to say it’s easy, but I will say that we’ve hit a bit of a rhythm after working really hard at it for some time now. Over the years, we’ve found what works and does not work for us and are at a point where all of our families feel like they get good time with us, are aware of how hard we work at it, and we feel like it is manageable to maintain. Maybe someday I’ll do a blog post with a few things we’ve learned and advice we’d give because the more I talk about it with people, the more I realize that blending families is something that is universally challenging and everyone can relate to it.
In general, we see each family for a few hours on Christmas Day (they all live relatively close to each other) and then cycle back around the rest of the week to spend a few days at each. This break was one of the best we’ve had so far and I’d argue that it was our most enjoyable Christmas together yet. I left the week feeling like we had spent great quality time with everyone, got closer with each family, and had a TON of memories to look back on. This vacation seemed to have a theme: GAMES. I think we played more games in one week than maybe all of our other visits combined. Bottom line… we had a blast and I’m so thankful that we have some footage to remember it by.
About that. What I’m about to put you through requires the heart of a champion and a dedication to this blog that I wouldn’t expect of anyone. Heck, I can barely get Mitch to watch the whole thing with me. 🙂 Just kidding. Kind of. Bribery is a most effective weapon. Friends, it’s TWENTY EIGHT minutes long. Being our first ever vlog, we really got some good video of most of the trip, but editing this baby was something else. Hours down to minutes, people, hours to minutes.
I don’t expect you to watch this whole thing. If you do, I owe you an award or a cookie or at least a lottery ticket. PS. If you win the big bucks, I call half though. 🙂 However much you decide to power through, I hope it puts a smile on your face. It was a lot of fun to put together and I know it will be one of those things we watch back for many many years down the road. Ugh, remember when we had so much energy? How annoying. 😉
And with that, I bring you the backstage pass to Christmas and New Year’s 2015… Thomas style.
Did you make it? Or did you stop at minute 3? I won’t judge you… we can still be friends. 🙂 Do me a quick favor, though. We are going to kick it up a notch with the video making around here and have some big things up our sleeves for the future. That being said, we’re doing a soft launch of our YouTube channel, so if you could head on over and Subscribe, you won’t miss a single video! There may be some things that we put up there and not on the blog, so you’ll want to click that Subscribe button so as not to miss any of the fun.
Oh, and give us a shout out if you liked the vlog! Like the video on YouTube, comment below or over on YouTube… tell us what you’re thinking! If you’d like to see more videos like this one, let us know!
As always, thanks for following along with the crazy around here. This year was a wild one and we wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without your support. Thanks for reading, following, commenting, pinning, and sharing. We love you guys! Looking forward to a VERY fun 2016!
