we are nutty.

So Thanksgiving was the last post, huh? That means I need to catch you up on about 3 weeks. Hey! That's not too bad! I thought we were way way behind.

For those of you who don't know, I LOVE Christmas. As a Christian, how can celebrating THIS day not be your favorite?! The beginning of JOY on Earth! I'm getting tingly typing about it.

So right before we left, Tommy let me start taking out my Christmas decorations. This mainly involves finding more and more nutcrackers and more and more boxes of nutcrackers. I always forget I have a nutcracker stocking holder, nutcracker ornaments, a nutcracker snow globe and music box.... etc. I have no idea how I started collecting them. Ha. My mom collects angels, my aunt collects Santas, Oma (who you met in the last post) collects snowmen... I apparently chose the scariest thing to collect. Seriously, those eyes and teeth will freak you out when you're all alone and the light flickers on them.... -chomp chomp chomp-

No, I really do love them. And I think Tommy underestimated how many I actually own. Ah, the things you learn in the first year of marriage...

So of course, when we got back, I had to actually decorate and THEN we had to get our TREE!!! I wanted to get it that Monday. But Tommy made us WAIT.

So Saturday we were OFF. But we had to hurry, because that night we had our first Christmas party as a married, in Gainesville, with our new church, actually know people, couple.

We checked out a couple of places, bought a stand and strings of lights, and settled on one place to find out tree. Good grief, that is a difficult task. Because after you're there for two minutes, you see every flaw and misshapen detail of every tree. Every. Tree. We did finally find one, and it is gorgeous. Tommy got to do the lights, and then we both put on the ornaments. The awesome thing is that both of us have almost all of our childhood ornaments. Mom gives both my sister and I an ornament every year. And it seems like Tommy's grandparents did the same thing for him. So we have a wonderful assortment of 80s and 90s memorabilia, including a ballerina, a fishing Santa, a ship, and lots of hearts.

It's just so nice to show off our JOY.

So we made it to that party! I was going to make my famous baked beans, but since we had more important things to do, we took chips. It was a really fun time. We played awkward party games, and oddly enough they both were secret murderer types. We sat around a camp fire and made SMORES. YUM. And we sang Christmas carols. And prayed and shared what we were thankful for. It really did make us feel like we had a church family - which we should've remembered is all over the world!

It was a lovely beginning to a wonderful Christmas season.