It's that time of year...

Believe or not, this is the first full Christmas Matt and I are spending in our own home since we met back in 2006. That first Christmas we had just begun dating and Matt was heading back to the UK to see his family and meet our niece, Livvy, for the first time. The next year we went on our first trip together over the UK where I met Matt's family for the first time. In 2008, we headed over to the UK on Christmas Day and then in 2009 after our wedding we went over to Europe first for our honeymoon in Italy and then to the UK for another wedding celebration with extended family in Yorkshire and Christmas with the Coates clan. This year though, we have our own tree for the first time and our house full of all the joys of the holiday season. I even got Matt to go shopping for a centerpiece, wrapping paper and ornaments!

We are also going to be hosting my immediate family for the first time on Christmas Day. We always go to my Uncle Mark's on Christmas Eve and usually just laid low on Christmas Day, but Matt and I are going to try and bring a little Blighty charm to the Duggan Christmas. We are not really doing a traditional dinner - my family always made filet mignon as we are deprived of meat products the night before for our Polish Wigilia (a very light version of the tradition albeit). We are going to do red cabbage and we ordered mince pies, Quality Street candy, Christmas pudding, brandy butter and Christmas crackers (the kind with the toy and crown inside) from the UK. It should be a very fun and new way to spend Christmas together as a family.

We will miss all of our family in the UK though... It will be hard not sharing Buck's Fizz with Toby, Fei, David, Sue and Charley and not seeing Livvy open her gifts on Christmas Day. We are headed there in April though and then we will be able to meet the newest addition to the family who is due at the end of January. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder and for this year we are going to make the holidays merry, state side.

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends on both sides of the pond! xx