A Humble Ramzi-Ramsay Christmas: Mele Kalikimaka!

This Christmas we didn't have the 'stuff' that generally comes with the season, but we did get  all the 'good stuff' that comes from realizing what Christmas is really all about. Having just had the privilege to have our families with us for one of the most sacred and beautiful moments of our lives, we really couldn't ask for more than getting to celebrate another sacred event with our new little family. We wouldn't be nearly as happy without our Savior and the blessings of eternity his sacrifice brings into our lives. Here are some pictures of our first and very humble Christmas.

Well, as of Christmas Eve and after pulling out money for rent....we had 8.75 to our name. But luckily we had already decided to not worry about Christmas presents since we already had each other. 

But what was awesome was the Christmas Eve Rainbow we saw! Nothing can beat Christmas in Hawaii.

We could almost see the whole thing!!

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Christmas morning I decided to get up early and make cinnamon rolls. 

I was excited to us my mom's recipe that has been in her family for a few generations. They're not quite as good as hers are, but luckily I have many Christmases ahead to improve!

And now here are all the things we did for our Christmas room:

I asked Ramzi to paint me a first place so we had a place to hang our stockings. He did a beautiful job. Thank you Sarah and Sterling for leaving us so many priority mail boxes to use!

We had wanted to get a real tree, but it just didn't make sense financially. So we decided to work with what we had. We had been keeping this broken surfboard on the porch for a few months. I kept trying to throw it away, but Ramzi was sure we could find something to do with it. Well he ended up being right! We felt like this was perfect for our first Christmas in Hawaii. We will never forget our surfboard tree. 

One of the traditions we want to start is picking out a new ornament for every year. We found this one on our honeymoon. It was perfect because it's Santa holding a sea turtle. You really can't get any better than that. 

This was our only other real ornament. This is a very sweet gift from Ramzi's sister Papi. I love that it has our picture on it and that it says "The Dosch's". I still get all giddy every time I realize I'm a Dosch now!

This was our little corner of Georgia from Pam and Ed. We can't wait to actually get to use all of our socks once we're in the mainland.

Here is another sweet gift from the McKellars. I can't wait to hang it up in all our homes to come! But it just looked so good under the tree. You can also see the dagger my dad made me from scratch out of apricot wood. Even though we didn't have any presents for each other, we got some pretty awesome gifts from our family :)

This is another present showing off our how awesome our family is. My dad made this for Ramzi. It's a wand inspired by Harry Potter. Ramzi is officially part of the family! Even if he would be in Slytherin house.

This was the other half of the surfboard. I decided to cover it with pictures of us and the McKellar Christmas card. And of course we needed to put twinkle lights on it too. You can never have too many twinkle lights.

I found this picture going through Ramzi's mission photos. I thought it was fitting to go up in our Christmas room since that's what Christmas is all about. 

And though our names are more glittery than Ramzi would ever want, I thought it added a nice amount of bling to our surfboard bulletin board. 

I think Ramzi regretted letting me go through his old pictures because I found this gem. I told him it wasn't even an option not to put it up. 

And here's what it looks like all together!

Again, twinkle lights make everything better. 

These were our first Christmas pajamas (my family gets new pajamas every Christmas). I picked batman so there was at least a chance Ramzi would wear them.

And here's what our Christmas morning looked like. We wanted to fill up our stockings with something, so we each got our favorite candies to snack on Christmas day. Simple but yummy.

Now, I'm ending with this fortune cookie because I feel like its advice is fitting. We opened this fortune cookie on Christmas Eve, after a long day of trying to decide what to do for Christmas. If you can't see it, it says: "Approach all areas of life with a bold enthusiasm". I feel like it's fitting for us because we're at the perfect point to approach life with enthusiasm. We have no idea what the future holds, but we know whatever happens we can make it great! We can take a broken surfboard and make it into one of the best Christmases we've ever had. So here's to simplicity, and love, and being a new family. Mele Kalikimaka and Merry Christmas!