hootenanny: catch up to the new year

We had a very blessed and special holiday this year. Many of you probably heard our sweet niece, Juliette, was at Le Bonheur PICU with RSV. You can read in more detail over at Leslie's blog. She has written some beautiful words about their 2 week experience patiently waiting for sweet Juliette to recover. We all needed that reminder that we are NOT in control and God's timing is His, and there is nothing we can do to change it. Ever.

Little Jules is now recouping at home and I know Leslie and Jonathan are, too. Le Bonheur has a special place in our hearts after spending two weeks and our Christmas there. Thank you to the staff for making our family feel so special and loved.

Tradition. We Guinns love it. T-man and I decided the first year we were married that we would do Thanksgiving with his fam, and Christmas at our home in Memphis where my fam lives. Every Christmas eve morning Leslie holds a yummy brunch, and then we head to our parents that evening for pimiento cheese sandwiches in the shape of Christmas trees and gift-opening with our Granny and my dad's brother's fam. It's always a good time and last year I believe we played Beatles rockband. Christmas morning mom makes the same delicious breakfast and we enjoy a lazy day opening presents and watching Christmas movies, usually Home Alone. Leslie, Scott and I know all the words to the movie. It's our favorite. Scott used to be so tricky like ol' Kevin McAllister. With all this said, we love our Christmas traditions. It was obviously very different this year, but we tried to still make it just as special for Leslie, Jonathan and Juliette. We took the usual breakfast down to the hospital and all ate together with our fam and Jonathan's fam too. I loved this. I loved not getting so wrapped up in "our" Christmas and remembering there are families in sad/different situations... say, in a hospital. We went back down there for a chili & tamale dinner and took some more gifts for Leslie and Jonathan to open. And an answered prayer... Juliette got off the ventilator on Christmas day. It was a great day.

I'll just share some photos from the rest of our holiday. T-man and I enjoyed last week off together before he gets busy busy in the next few months. I'm still deciding what my busy season project will be this year. Happy new year everyone!