Christmas Cards Through The Years

It may be a Southern thing, but I just love sending Christmas cards each year! My mom always color-coordinated our outfits growing up for our annual Christmas card picture that would go to family and friends. When Parker and I got married, I knew I wanted to keep the tradition alive with our little family. They are fun to send, fun to receive, and it gives me an excuse to take a nice picture at least once a year. ;)

I ordered this book two years ago as a way to store our cards and write down fun Christmas memories from each year to look back on. I love it! I have ordered Christmas cards from several sites and honestly, they all do a good job. My only advice is to check Groupon before purchasing Christmas cards. The past 2 years, I have used Photo Affections because they have a Groupon for 78% off. This year I ordered 100 cards for $37.99... not too shabby for this little cheapo!

 We try to make the annual Christmas card somewhat representative of what our life looked like that year. Apologies for the poor quality... I didn't have a digital copy of each card so I went old school and took a picture of a picture!

Our first Christmas (2011), we were living in College Station, TX about to make our first big move to Pensacola. We had been married 6 months, and those first 6 months were spent doing all things family and Aggieland. We took our picture in my grandparents' front yard in Midlothian, TX. 

Our second Christmas (2012), we went to the beach with our good friends Ryan and Emily and each took pictures for the others. We spent so much time at Pensacola beach in 2012, so taking our picture there was a no-brainer. We all had so much fun taking pictures for each other and trying to wrangle two crazy pups in the process! Fun fact: Blogging that experience was one of my first ever posts! You can read more here. 

Our third Christmas (2013), we took our picture on base in Kingsville, TX. The intent was to have the big "Fly Navy" water tower in the background, and you can read all about that little debacle here. 

Our fourth Christmas (2014), we took the picture in front of our rental house in Norfolk, VA. We just loved that little house, and this card is probably my favorite of the bunch. I love all of them, but the 2014 card is special to me because it is one that we will never be able to recreate again. I was still pregnant with Taylor Grace in this picture, and we had sweet Darla who we kept for a year while her mom was on deployment. 

Our fifth Christmas (2015), we took the picture in the woods behind the home we had just purchased. This was the year we became homeowners, so this location was a given for the Christmas card! This was also the first card that Jenny smiled for. Only took 4 years! You can see more pictures from 2015's photoshoot here. 

And here we are approaching our sixth Christmas (2016). I thought a lot about what I wanted to do with our card this year. I knew I still wanted to send one, but deployment represented over half of 2016 for us, so I wanted to somehow incorporate that. In the end, I decided Parker and I would both hold signs that pointed to each other and read "All I Want For Christmas Is" and "All We Want For Christmas Is". I created them on picmonkey.com and printed them off for $2 at The UPS Store. I mailed Parker his sign, had him hold it next to the plane, and Jenny and I took a separate picture with our sign. I put the two next to each other and am quite pleased with the result!

I blurred out the bottom of this year's card because it has our son's name on it. We just aren't quite ready to share that on the blog just yet. :)