Holidays and Compromise

First of all - happy Cyber Monday, y'all.

(Am I the only one that's never heard of this day before?)

There have been a number of things Nate and I have happily compromised on with regards to holidays.

We trade off Christmases between Oregon and New York.

We eat fondue instead of grilled cheese sandwiches on Christmas Eve (that wasn't a hard compromise - I've always hated the grilled cheese tradition).

We make a big deal out of Valentine's day instead of forgetting about it (cough cough).

I go and watch Nate play in turkey bowls every Thanksgiving (even though I am morally against it because I am convinced it is the mens' way of getting out of helping cook...)

There is one thing, though, with which we absolutely could not come to a compromise: Thanksgiving morning television.

My family watches the Macy's Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning. Nate's family watches football. Neither of us was willing to budge.

So here was the result:

Don't worry, we traded off the big picture to whoever didn't have a commercial at the time.

What would we do without modern technology to help us in our compromises??

And even though neither of our families are traditionally on the ball for setting up their Christmas decorations right away, ours were all up by Thanksgiving night.


And now I will show off how pretty they are:

Our decorative Christmas tree - how my family does the tree

 Our special ornaments tree- how Nate's family does the tree (only theirs is a lot bigger...)

On our special ornaments Christmas tree is a tradition of our own - each year we get an ornament or two that represent the year for us. This year's ornament:

oh, so true...

 Nate's family does red bows on the staircase. My family does green garland. Our compromise was red garland. (actually, this garland was just pretty)

Both of our families collect nativity scenes. This is our favorite from our own little collection.

Merry Christmas! 

(and Cyber Monday)