Griswalds

We're not the Griswalds. Far from it actually.
But for our very first (officially married)Christmas together we at least have some decorations up! It took us a while to get it all together, but hey we did it! Which is an awesome feat. :]

So these are almost all of the nativities I have. Tacky I know since they're all clustered over the TV, but with limited space this was what had to work. Then there are two on our bookcase, the top one is one that Becky has given  me pieces of over time, and the bottom one is a wood puzzle we won at our ward party. We were pretty stoked about that. :]

This is our tree. Oh the tree. This tree gave us stress, moreover it gave Troy stress. We bought our first real tree this year. I thought people who did fake were crazy and taking away from the entire experience of Christmas. I will not be surprised if we do fake next year. :] So we got the tree. Brought it home and got it in our stand. After about an hour of working and working the tree wouldn't stand up straight in the stand. It kept leaning back towards the wall. We finally just gave up, and started doing the lights. The first round of lights we bought didn't connect to one another (why would you need that?!?!) so Troy made a trip to Home Depot and got us some heavy duty super awesome Christmas lights. After we got all the lights on, we realized we needed one more strand to finish off the top. The next night we went back to Home Depot to find some. They had none. Both the Wal-Marts in Logan had none. Kmart had none. Lowes had none. There were no lights to be found in Cache Valley. We finally found some at Walgreen's (thank goodness!) We got home, finished putting up the lights and then had to face the leaning problem (yes we still had a crooked tree.) Troy struggled with it for another hour and eventually came to the conclusion it would not stand up on it's own. He took a small easel I had holding up a decoration and leaned it against the bottom of the tree. Ghetto. But hey, now our tree stands up super straight! Then we turned on Christmas music and put all our ornaments from years past on our tree. It was really fun and we both were laughing about the weird ornaments we had received. My mom had written out why I had gotten each one so we could easily remember what everything meant to me way back when. :] In the end our tree had a happy ending. And I'm glad to stay it is still alive and well, even though it's not a Nordman from Glover Nursery. :]

We're excited to get to spend Christmas at home with our families, and are really hoping to get some snow soon because this is just shameful. We live in Logan and usually don't get blue sky from October to March, and we have had nothing but lately! It's been pretty ridiculous.

We have also been keeping up on a tradition my family started a long time ago, the Jesus Stocking. Our's is a wicker Jesus Gift, and we have index cards that we write things that we are thankful for and then put them in the gift. It has been fun having it just being me and Troy, and he has gotten really into it. I'm excited to get to read them in a few days!

Even more excited to get to spend next year's Christmas with an extra addition!