Hey, Mark and Grace Driscoll here for the Exo Real Marriage podcast.

And we're just gonna do some special episodes

that are really practical.

And our first one is answering how to plan the holidays

as a couple and family.

Okay, we don't prepare these.

They just happen.

Let's be honest about our first Christmas as a married couple.

The next question.

No, no, no, no, no, we're going to be honest.

Because if you don't architect the holidays, they really don't come together.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of stress during the holidays. You're working, you're

trying to get everything caught up, you've got shopping, you've got guests, maybe travel. In addition,

there's financial pressures. You're hoping to get some time off. So you're needing to get

everything off of your to-do list. We got married while we were in college. And as a result, we just

come home and we kind of assumed that our extended families would have the tree up and Christmas

plan and we just sort of jump right in. We didn't do a good job, especially that first year,

as a newly married couple figuring out how we were going to do our own

kind of holidays and Christmas. And we hadn't talked about any expectations about what you

expected for holidays, what I expected for holidays, and how to celebrate even. And so we were home,

which normally we would have gone with my family to the ocean, and I worked right up until Christmas.

...