Merry Christmas!

It is Christmas Eve and it is shaping up to be our best Christmas yet!

All of the presents are wrapped and under the tree...

PLUS, it has been snowing all day long!

Since it was 75 degrees here yesterday not much of the snow has stuck to the warm ground, but our rooftop is white and it is certainly looking a lot like Christmas around here! We're headed out the door to a Christmas Eve service with Kolby's family, but I wanted to pop in and wish everyone a very merry Christmas tomorrow!

Luke 2:8-11

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Kolby and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary this week. On December 15th to be exact. I love that our anniversary falls around Christmastime... it just makes this time of year even more special. We feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful start to our marriage and I can't picture what my life would be like without Kolby. I love the life that we have together and I love thinking back to our long but joyous road to get here. There are a lot of fun memories to reminisce about when you've been dating since you were 15 years old!

We continued the tradition that we started last year and hosted our parents for a fancy dinner on our anniversary day. We grilled New York strip steaks and made three cheese risotto and roasted corn soup. The food was phenomenal, if I do say so myself :). Two years ago we had the most beautiful wedding either of us could possibly have dreamed of. From the rehearsal dinner to the wedding reception, our parents bent over backwards to make everything absolutely perfect for us, and sharing our anniversary with them over a nice meal together is one very small way that we attempt to show our thankfulness and gratitude. It is always a great time and we loved having a nice warm house to invite them to this year!

To the many of you who celebrated us at our wedding, thank you for being a part of our special day! If you are feeling reminiscent, click here to watch a photo slideshow of our wedding. The music playing in the background is a David Crowder song that Kolby picked to have our friend Drew sing at the beginning of our wedding. Man, I love that song!

Here's to many more years of wedded bliss to come!

Oh Christmas Tree

Last Saturday we ventured out to some of my family's farmland in my hometown to chop down a Christmas tree. We went to a huge plot of land that my dad's grandparents once lived on and farmed. It was quite the adventure, but we had a lot of fun and got more exercise than either of us cared to get.

Here's Kolby standing in front of our tree (the middle one).

My lumberjack cutting away. Unfortunately, the perfect tree happened to be REALLY far away from the road. The arrow in the picture below is pointing to a group of big trees by the side of the road where we parked our car. The group of trees in the right side of the picture is where we thought we were going to find our tree, but they were all too big. So we tromped through the harvested, muddy land even further (twice as far, in fact) to the total opposite side of the property to find just the right tree. It was a long walk back to the car. Kolby had to carry the tree and I handled the dog, the ax and the saw. Did I mention that the soil was more than a little muddy? Strapped on and ready to go.
We used bungee cords to tie the tree to the roof but didn't think about how we wouldn't be able to open the car doors. We both had to climb through the window to get back in the car. Kolby is a pretty tall guy to be folding himself through a window of that size, but he made it. The tree started to shift back on the drive home so we had to stop on the side of the road and fix it, again climbing in and out of the windows. I'm sure it as a sight to behold for the passersby. It is definitely not your typical Christmas tree look... being a wild cedar tree and all. But the price was right ($0) and we love it and had a great time making it at home here. Here is the before picture: After (our very first Christmas tree!): It was hard to get a good picture of it, but trust me--- it looks awesome. Different, but awesome! We love it.

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This is actually our first Christmas to celebrate at home together. Our very first Christmas was spent living with Kolby's parents because we had just gotten back from our honeymoon and our apartment lease didn't start until January 1st. Then last year we were in Australia. So, since this was our first Christmas at home and our first house, we really wanted to go for it and put up Christmas lights outside. Our house is small and our roof is pretty flat, so it wasn't too hard to do. Kolby did such a great job!

Even before we were married we talked about how great it is going to be to one day have a house together and put up the old-fashioned big bulb Christmas lights. This was something we've both been looking forward to for a long time, and we are so happy with how they turned out. We went with red and white bulbs and although this picture looks terrible, the lights look fantastic. Seriously fantastic.

I used hand-me-down Christmas decorations to get the rest of the house ready for Christmas. My mom had several bins full of old decorations that she hadn't used in years, so I grabbed a bunch of stuff to make do for this year and then I'm hoping to get a few new items when everything goes on clearance in January. Here is the front of our house:

Our entry table:

Our beautiful stockings that Kolby's parents gave us for Christmas last year. Pottery Barn is my favorite store in the world but these are the only things we actually own from there! Our house doesn't have a fireplace, so we hung them over our couch. Isn't Maya's elf stocking so cute?!? This is the sideboard cabinet next to our couch. Again, all these things look much better in real life than they do in these pictures! We're ready for Christmas!