O Christmas Tree.....

This week Randall and I have been on vacation! Randall's job would not allow him to take vacation before now due to the pressure to get the school he was building completed by the deadline. However, he also had to take his vacation before the end of the year when it would expire. So a December vacation we had! We decided it would be best not to go anywhere to far or expensive right now, and took the opportunity to do some much needed things around the house. I got most of the kitchen things put away in the cabinets and was able to cook our first real meal in the house (frozen pizza doesn't count!). My parents and Caleb came over for chili, cornbread casserole, and chocolate pie! The more family and friends we have over to the house, the more it feels like a home.
Along with housework, we also took time to put up a few Christmas decorations and went out and got a Christmas tree. No more fake trees for this girl, I like the real thing! So we got our Noble Fir from the local Wal*mart (next year I'm going to convince Randall to go out to Wall's Family Tree Farm and cut down our own), and brought it home to decorate. Only a few small delays: First is always the fun task of cutting the seal off the bottom of the tree so it will take up water. Here's my handy man at work!



We decided to get a bigger tree this year than last as we knew our living room ceiling was raised. What we failed to remember was that it was only raised in the middle of the room and not on the sides where the tree would go:

That would not do so it was back outside for Randall and tree to cut EIGHTEEN more inches off the tree to make it fit! We had a good laugh and finally got the tree inside, at an appropriate height, and set straight in the stand. It still awaits lights and decorations.

I also started on another project this week: setting up the Christmas Village my mother in law gave me that was given to her by a friend who bought it all and only used it once! It is so cute and I love all the little details on each one. The set comes complete with train, bridge, lamp posts and village people. My only problem is where to place all the houses, toy shops, bakeries, and churches as there are limited surfaces to put things in my house.


For now they all rest on a folding table waiting for someone to arrange them and adorn them with snow..... any volunteers?!

Randall couldn't believe how many houses I pulled from the boxes... they just kept coming. His favorite part was the train- boys will be boys!

We are having fun settling in for our first holidays in our new home!