DJ Notebook: My Christmas Vacation

First off, I want to say it's great to be back from vacation. I love vacation for the simple fact of not having to wake up to an alarm clock, but I love my job so I miss it a lot when I'm not here.

I started my vacation by attending 5 Christmases spread out over 4 days. To say it was exhausting is an understatement...but, I'm lucky to have such a big family. I really did

enjoy every minute of it.

I watched that Sandra Bullock movie that everyone is talking about right now on Netflix called "Bird Box". It was weird but it was the first full movie my husband and I watched together since our son's birth 14 months ago. So, we enjoyed the movie.

My husband and I started getting bored with our vacation once all of the Christmas celebrations were over. We decided to take a mini vacation and stay next to the Mall Of America at this cute little hotel with a big kiddie pool. We had fun watching our son swim for the first time since summer was over. I'm wondering when I became so adult?

We went to the Minnesota Zoo one day in there too. My son Charlie and his cousin Callie had a BLAST looking at all of the animals. I don't think he understood why all of the animals from his children's books were coming to life in front of him. It was cute!

I spent a lot of my vacation shopping for after Christmas specials and deals...guys, it's the best time to get cheap Christmas decorations for next year. I refuse to buy Christmas decor at full price...ever. Fun fact, I bought a fake tree for only $22.

I celebrated New Year's Eve by making enough food and snacks to feed a small village for my family of three. We stayed up until a whopping 11 p.m. to watch the New York ball drop, and played a full game of Monopoly (I won by the way).

My vacation wrapped up on New Year's Day. I attempted to make my first turkey...but, I quickly realized it was still very frozen...so instead we just ate snacks from our New Year's Eve party. Then, I went on a cleaning binge of the entire house! I put away all of our holiday decorations and cleaned out the crawl space. My house looks so empty now that our Christmas stuff is gone.

There's something so sad about the holidays ending...but, there's also something so inspiring about starting a fresh year. My vacation was filled full of  the best F-words--family, food and festivities. I hope you and your family had an amazing holiday, and I hope your year is one for the books!

P.S. did I mention how excited I am to be back from vacation?