I will start by apologizing for being totally MIA lately!! I am not exaggerating one bit when I tell you that Mark and I have had a commitment EVERY single night since December 1st! No joke! We have NOT spent a single night at home, without plans! It’s been absolutely insane, but an absolute blast at the same time! Tomorrow night is our VERY first night at home and I told Mark that we can’t make plans even if the Pope calls because we have a MOUNTAIN of gifts to wrap and ONE evening to do it ALL!! (wish us luck…we’re seriously going to need it!) I cannot recall a December that flew by as quickly as this one did. I seriously had to do a double take today when someone in target said that Christmas was 3 days away. I mean, clearly I do know that, but I sort of haven’t even looked up from the holiday madness to realize it…until today! Mark also told me that he was coming home early tomorrow after being treated to lunch by his boss…and I couldn’t figure out why! He gave me the “wow, you are really blonde aren’t you” look and said, “uhhhh…it’s the last working day before Christmas, Jess.” I was sort of shocked.

Soo, back to the point…..feeling grateful. Well, as I have said, I love this time of year soo very much. To me, it’s just the most joyous time of year and I really have enjoyed each and every moment of the excitement and magic, this year!! It truly makes me feel soo grateful and blessed. There is also such a sense of warmth and a spirit of giving this time of year….and I love it. I love how our country just bands together for the greater good and enjoys the magic of Christmas and the excitement that it brings! It seems like everyone is in sync this time of year…being happy, giving selflessly and enjoying life. Mark and I spent the last week surrounded by people who we love….at family Christmases, dinners with friends & family, evenings out of town to visit friends, dinner parties, holiday events, etc, etc…..and especially after looking at this wonderful month in review, I just can’t help but feel overwhelmed. And every night, since early this month, I’ve come home and been soo excited to get the new pile of Christmas cards from that day!! It’s been soo fun! Just tonight, we got home late and I opened the Christmas cards…still as excited as when the first pile arrived…..and it just totally made my night. I have seriously been soo blessed in my life to be surrounded with incredible, loving people….amazing family, awesome friends, wonderful clients, incredible colleagues and more!! I have also had such a great year, this past year!! I’ve been richly blessed in soo many ways….it puts me at a loss for words. Thank you, to each one of you, for following my blog and supporting me. It truly means the world to me to have soo many supporters and friends and I thank you, again!

I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a joyous, blessed Christmas!!!
(i’ll spare you the video this time, I learned my lesson on that!)
I truly hope it’s a time that reminds you of how magical this season is and allows you to really feel the joy of it all. I also wish you a happy and prosperous New Year! It’s going to be a GREAT year!

With much love and warm wishes….

Jessica Strickland (& Mark!)

I’m SOO sorry for the lack of blog posts! Things have been super busy,

we’ve had committments every single night and I’ve also been working like crazy editing many, many weddings, engagement sessions, family portraits and much more! Despite all of that, I do LOVE this time of year!! It’s my absolute favorite time of year! I always have this feeling, though, around this time that there just aren’t enough hours in the day! We have constant plans, dinners, events, etc…..so I always feel this stress like Christmas is approaching and still have tons of shopping to do still and dinner parties to coordinate, Christmas cards to send out,

more decorating to do, a house to clean, groceries to buy, wrapping to do, etc, etc! It’s fun, though…despite the stress….and I put Christmas music on while

I do it all and try to stay in a great holiday spirit! So, last week we went out for a holiday evening, with my family! My sister is crazy thoughtful and always puts together these fun,

out of the ordinary surprises for our family during Christmas…but they are always really fun. So, this year, we had a great dinner, then went to Christmas at the Children’s Museum! We have all really been wanting to go and see the Chihuly(an incredible glass blower & sculptor) exhibit, there…and we did! It was SUCH fun!

It’s hilarious how everyone turns into a child at the Children’s Museum, regardless of their age!(hence the image above of my 26 year old husband) It was a blast! Then, my Dad’s family came into town for our Christmas celebration…and we started the weekend with dinner at the Oceanaire, downtown! As I have told you, we have the BEST family and we all love being together soo much, so it was terrific!

Then, Mark and I made a strong attempt to do all of our Christmas shopping on Saturday, in one day(knowing that was a totally hopeless effort!)…and we did pretty good…moved as quickly as we could, kept good attitudes and picked up a few Starbucks’ along the way….. but come nowhere near being completely done, like we hoped!

Then, we finished Saturday off with a fantastic dinner with our great friends, Brandon & Cybil, of B&C Digital Media Videography. We get together on a regular basis and always have SUCH a blast!

We went downtown and had a fantastic dinner at PF Chang’s! We love it there! We also had fun hanging out on the circle and having Starbucks! It was a GREAT night and we just LOVE those two! (the videos are of us!).

On Sunday, we had family Christmases and enjoyed time with our family!

It was a great week and super fun weekend…full of many excellent meals and lots of our favorite people! We are headed out of town this week for dinner with friends, in town for dinners with family and have many more family Christmases coming this weekend and next weekend!! It’s just crazy….but it’s really a lot of fun! Hope you are all having a fun holiday season, so far and enjoying lots of time with all of your favorite people and eating lots of great food! (OH…and please note, all images were taken on point and shoot camera….and this last picture is mark and I doing our lame tourist pose…and the two images above where we look mean is when we were doing our “i know what you did last summer” faces…just incase you were curious!)

This is everyone making fun of me, as usual…

These are our friends Brandon & Cybil…I stole Mark’s trick where he acts like he’s taking a picture(note that they kiss for a long time, waiting for the picture to be taken!), but he’s really videotaping! I’m a nerd! Oh…and at the end, I don’t normally scream at my husband like that, but I looked up and saw cars coming and the pedestrian sign flashing do not walk and my husband goes running across…so I screamed at him! Other people were doing it too, though…so then we joined in! Maybe I should have ended the video a lil sooner!)