family pictures.

As most of you know this Christmas is going to be the first time in five years my entire family has been together for the Holidays! It is about to get crazy up in the Gifford's household! I am so stoked and as the season approaches I am getting more and more excited. It is going to be a good holiday, I can just feel it.

With this joyous occasion we are going to be lucky enough to do something I wish my family has done more of growing up, family pictures! I think I am just as excited for the pictures as I am for Christmas, if not more. I just love pictures and some of my favorite kind are family pictures. Rarely do you get the opportunity to see an entire family together really enjoying each others company and then be able to freeze the moment forever to look back on and cherish. I love seeing who looks like who or knowing one person like a friend or co-worker, but then seeing them in a picture with their family and it just makes me realized how blessed we are to be part of such a wonderfully and divinely planned unit.

I guess I am a little biased as I did graduate with a degree in family studies, but I just love families! It is the one place someone can be completely 100% themselves and be loved to the moon and back. It is where we can feel safe and secure in the midst of a troubled world. It is where we can go when we need help or advice. My sisters have become my most trusted confidants, the only people that know every detail of my life; my secrets, worries, concerns, fears, goals, hopes, and future dreams. My siblings have become the people I can go to when I just need to feel silly or goofy like hiding under beds waiting to scare your sister, or watching the Walking Dead marathon, or duct taping your brother like a taco in a blanket and rolling him down the stairs, or have sing-offs and epic dance battles, or just being together, knowing you are not alone in this world.

I know one too many very close friends who have not been as lucky to have a wonderful family life or support system growing up. However, as they have grown up and made it through such trials, they have created their own family unit of amazing friends or spouses and their own children. I hope everyone is able to feel the love of a family, no matter the form it comes in. If you don't, come find me and I will be happy to be your big sister, little sister, grandma, aunt, or mom, whatever you need.

2000: Oh the bangs. haha.

Christmas 2004

2008.

2008.

Because we are that cool. You just might want to make that video right down there fullscreen. It is that epic.



I have had a few friends ask me recently about my spiritual beliefs when it comes to family. While I have already shared with them my thoughts and feelings of families being eternal, I wanted to share a few links to videos that I thought summed up my beliefs beautifully:

Families are Forever

Spending Time With Family