Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the south! While the rest of the world is being blanketed with snow, our one Christmas wish did not come true :( Instead of snow, Phil and I celebrated Christmas with 70 degree weather. But, we still had a lot to be thankful for, so we can't complain.

We had a lot of fun decorating our little apartment and for what we have, the house looks pretty cute. It helps that Phil has a smaller tree, so it fit nicely in between our fireplace and TV. We put up lights in our windows, put Christmas cards from friends and family on the unofficial Christmas wall, and Phil helped me decorate my first gingerbread house! We took the easy way out and got a pre-cut house, but I think we did a great job with decorating it!

As for the holiday, Phil unfortunately had to work this whole week, but we figured this was a time to start new traditions. Christmas Eve, Phil was at work, so I attended our church's service (since the congregation is only about 40 people, there is only one service), then waited for Phil to come home from work so we could open one present (I was the little kid that was waiting by the tree the minute he stepped through the door)! We made apple cider, opened one present each and then headed to bed (with visions of sugar plums in our heads)!

Christmas morning, we got up, opened the rest of the presents, ate Monkey Bread, then headed to a new church to attend their Christmas service. After church, it was back home to get into sweats and play with our new toys! Phil played his new Tiger Woods game for playstation while I camped out at the kitchen table and scrapbooked. Ah the life!

As for the rest of this week, Phil is finally on his Friday, so he is looking forward to his weekend. My parents are coming tomorrow (!!!!!), so today I will prepare (and anxiously await) their arrival.

We hope everyone had a safe and blessed Christmas! We'll post soon with our adventures of New Year's!

Wishing and hoping for snow

A lot of you may be wanting to strangle us for that title, but Phil and I have been bit by the snow bug and unfortunately, there is nowhere to go. Although, according to the weather forcast, we're supposed to hit temperatures in the teens tonight with a high of 32 tomorrow, so maybe we'll get to see flurries :)

As a side note, for those of you that recieved our Christmas letter, we obviously were not in the right state of mind and we stated that our 2009 was a busy wedding-planning season. No, we are not planning on getting married again (although another honeymoon would be okay with us). So, spread the news: Texas has brainwashed us and we don't even know what year we're living in :)

In other news, I am rejoicing because I am officially on winter break! I can't brag too much as Phil is on another 9-day stretch at work. Today, he is 3 days into it, so when December 27 rolls around, he will be all smiles as he does not have to report for duty at the airport for a few days. We still don't know what we have planned for our Christmas festivities. I think we'll do a Christmas brunch (since Phil works the evenings of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day), but I guess this is the time to start new traditions, so we're trying to plan things out. My parents are coming in one week and I am anxiously counting down the days until their arrival!

The past few weeks have been full of decorating, writing (and messing up) our first Christmas letter, wrapping presents, shipping packages (we have officially kept the postal service in business), listening to Christmas music and just getting in the spirit of everything. Oh, and of course, I am sick once again. I cannot wait until my body is used to Texas and school germs. This time around, it was a cough, headache and severe ear infection. Once again, I went to the doctor and got put on multiple medications. The cough and other aches are gone, but I still have difficulty hearing out of my ear and there is still some pain. The deafness has worked to my advantage in some ways since the kids were very excited for Christmas, so instead of talking, they thought yelling screaming everything was the way to go. If it was loud for me, I knew it was blaring for everyone else.

We also celebrated my entrance to the quarter-century club this week. We are now a household of 25 year-olds (that act like 10 year-olds sometimes)! Phil just laughs when he sees how excited I get for my special day. Here I am with my new bike that he got for me. I guess I don't have any more excuses to not train for triathlons :) Thank you everyone for your warm wishes, thoughts and calls!

We hope everyone is having a blessed holiday season. Hopefully you all should be getting our cards in the mail soon (we're still addressing some, but they'll get out-- don't worry)! Merry Christmas and have a safe and happy new year!

'Tis the season

We made it through Thanksgiving and now we're heading into the time for Christmas! This is my favorite time of the year and Phil is quickly figuring out that I am a child at heart. Everything is so exciting during this time and I am anxious for all the Christmas has in store-- from the beautiful decorations around town to the wonderful church events to the fantastic songs that everyone just can't help but sing along with. I love it all!
The first picture is of us after we completed all the cooking for our first Thanksgiving feast! We were too tired and exhausted to change out of our sweats, so we just ate as we were. So, not the most romantic or beautiful scene, but we were so impressed that we were able to cook everything and get everything done, I guess we didn't care what we looked like! We had the full feast of turkey, mashed potatoes (not out of a box!), green bean casserole, bread (homemade!), gravy, stuffing, cookie salad, pumkin pie and cinnamon ice cream (from our amazing ice cream maker). Whew! Yes, we had leftovers as lunch and dinner for a couple of days after.

To keep the Thanksgiving traditions rolling, Phil and I got up and went shopping on Black Friday at 6am! We were one of the first ones at Target and we loaded up on the things we needed then headed over to Kohl's, where Phil was an amazing husband and went straight to the back of the line so I could shop and not have to worry about waiting. Unfortunately, our Kohl's was not prepared for the events of the day, and while the line wasn't that long, we ended up waiting for 56 minutes. Ouch. But, after dropping our items at home, we left the car and walked to the mall to finish up with things (the mall is about 1/4 mile from our house). It was great to walk in the fresh air and even better that we didn't have to deal with the mess of parking. After the morning events, we came home, decorated the tree and the house, and I started wrapping presents-- yes, I couldn't wait.
As for now, we've stayed busy with random activities with our church, co-workers and just each other. Phil and I laugh sometimes because we know we were meant to be together. One night last week, we realized that we had not set up the tent that we got for our wedding, so we just set it up in our living room and had a camp out. It's so fun to have those random adventures and to have someone that loves to do them as much as you. If we had snow here, I'm sure we'd be the couple that goes out to sled down the hill with the little kids.
Hopefully everyone else is having a blessed holiday season. We got our Christmas cards ordered, the house is decorated, and I'm getting ready to start my baking spree of the season, so Christmas is all around!