Christmas

Matthew and I spent our first Christmas as husband and wife with Matthew's family. We had a great time. We spent Christmas day with Matthew's extended family and ate a lot of good food. Late Christmas night Matthew's sister, brother-in-law and niece came into town. Because they got in so late, we decided to open presents the morning of the 26th. It's been so long since I've been around a child at Christmas. Our niece is 7 years old and her excitement was contagious. It was fun to be around that again. Other than the excitement of opening gifts, we had a different type of excitement Christmas night. It was about 10pm and we were waiting for my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and niece to get in. At about 10pm, the doorbell rang and of course we thought it was them. Turns out, it was another neighbor. Matthew's mom answered the door and the neighbor said, "Did you know the house next door to you is on fire?" Yeah! On fire! So we spent our Christmas night with flames blazing next door. The fire department came out and they were there until 3am. It was so shocking. Thank goodness the house had been vacant since May, but it was still so sad and shocking. You see it all the time on movies and tv shows, but nothing compares to seeing a home burn down before your eyes. It's so sad because you know that it was someone's home and those memories are being burned to the ground. So needless to say it was a pretty eventful Christmas night. We snapped a few pictures of the house but also have some from our Christmas festivities.