A December Update

I know I've been gone. Many apologies. We were sailing the (cold) Atlantic seas.  On the upside, I got a sneak peek of one of my Christmas presents from Casey that he bought while we were there. I love it, but now I'm going to try to forget it for the next week and a half. Also, my parents gave me one of my Christmas presents early because I ran out of books to read. I got a NOOK! I love it. It's so awesome. I love reading and learning. We didn't get to do any excursions cause it was chilly and frankly, nothing really struck our fancy. The two stops were in the Bahamas which wasn't that great, and while it was not warm enough to lay out in a skimpy little bikini, we still braved the water slide a couple times. Cannot go on a boat without going on the water slides. And yes, I had chocolate melting cake...almost every night. Do not judge me.

But we're back and back to work and back to good coffee. It's going to be a whirlwind next couple of weeks though!

Decorate our Christmas tree tonight! Date night (coffee shop) with Casey. And possibly yoga too?

Sal Blair comes to town tomorrow for the weekend. Woot woot!!

Christmas with Kate and Ashley on Monday night.

Yoga Tuesday with Casey.

Christmas Eve service with my family at 1 pm (Jimmy is speaking along with the little kiddies super cute nativity play) then all of Christmas Eve with Casey's family. Dinner, presents, the works.

Christmas morning at our house with our own traditions (we don't have them set yet so they'll be a surprise to everyone!). Then to mom and dad's after lunch to help mom make dinner and we'll do presents with my family and all the kids and watch Elf and have Christmas dinner.

Of course we have to fit in the rest of our Christmas movies in there with work and some running and biking too. And some gourmet-meal-making. Well, it'll be faux gourmet. I did go to the store last night, but we realize we'll busy, so the fancier meals will wait until after the holidays. Which is fine. I love soup when it's cold out. You absolutely can't go wrong. And progresso soup was on sale this week. Awesome. Even though we all know that homemade is better. At some point, I'll have to share my recipes for:

• Turkey Meatball, Escarole, and Orzo Soup
• Chicken n Dumplings (healthy version)
• White Bean and Chicken soup
• Casey's secret chili (since it's secret, there may not be too much sharing with this one)
• Chicken-Corn Chowder

Then back to work and New Years and meeting with some people or some person regarding the anniversary present I'm planning for Casey in May. I'm SO STOKED. I love secrets (especially ones like this), but I just want to tell him what it is. And I can't. And I'm pretty sure I talk about it everyday, telling him how excited I am about it.

Anyways, to hold you over, here is our VERY FIRST  {live} Christmas tree. We love it. Here's Casey setting it up...attempt to get it straight.

Good thing I've wrapped all the presents. We'll move them back under the tree once we get all the lights and 10 ornaments on the tree. OH. We also bought a new Christmas ornament in the Bahamas last week. We didn't have an angel to go on the tree, so that's what we got. It's made from seashells, and it's beautiful. I need to take a picture so you can see it up close.

And here we are putting the star on top. We obviously dressed up for the occasion and the picture...

It's a short little tree. Just our size, and it's perfect. We got it from the lot up the street from our house. And from the same people we bought our front door wreath from. I like them. When we can't get to the mountains to get our own tree, I'm totally set on using this family. They are so nice! Anyways, we're letting the branches "fall" before we decorate tonight.

On another note, the coffee we made at home this morning was way better than any coffee I've had in the last week. THANK GOODNESS for that!