Liddick Family Christmas in July- #1

You may remember last year when my family started the tradition of celebrating Christmas in the summertime instead of the more "traditional" winter holiday season :-) This started for a couple of reasons. One, my family is quite spread out geographically. My parents live in upstate New York, we live in Minnesota, my older brother and his kids live in Arizona, and until very recently my younger brother and his family lived in Kentucky. (They have recently moved to New York as well, a couple of hours from the parents). That's a lot of different directions to bring together when the weather is "iffy". Also, growing up in a pastor's home, it may or may not be a surprise to learn that each of us kids have grown up ministry-minded as well, and for anyone involved in church work to be gone around Christmas is next to impossible. We were finding that even when we wanted to celebrate a traditional Christmas together, it was never on the actual holiday and we were all so exhausted from pulling together all of the Christmas Eve services that it wasn't as fun as it should have/could have been. We experimented last year and had such a great time together, that it has stuck. Over the next several posts, you can see pictures and read about our trip and time together with the family. Getting this whole crew together is something that we're only able to achieve once a year; and when we do it's a very special time.