Christmas Festivities

Hello! I’m back again! I realized I had gone too long without blogging when I started getting that itchy-fingered feeling to write something. Now that it’s been so long, I can decide on a specific topic.. so I’ll start with the one at hand… CHRISTMAS!!!!!

I don’t know what it is about this year, maybe the fact that it’s Jered and my first Christmas together but I have been a nut. I get so excited every time I think about anything Christmas (even if it is a little hard to get in Christmas mode when it’s 73 degrees and sunny out). I made this huge list of things I wanted to do and have been slowly crossing them off. We got back from Thanksgiving, which PS was WONDERFUL!!

 on Nov 29 and I wanted the tree up RIGHT THEN.. I couldn’t wait!! We didn’t even have a tree so we had to go buy one and poor Jered was like dying. He has been really sick for over a week now, but I drug him out of the house and we got a tree on I think last Wednesday night. The suspense was KILLING me because on Tuesday night he got me all excited by saying he was feeling better so we could go out for a bit. That meant Christmas tree to me, so after getting hot dogs from Costco (the guy is sick and I said we could get whatever dinner sounded good to him and he chooses hot dogs from Costco..ha) we headed to Walmart to get tissues and Gatorade for the sickie and look at trees!..that probably sounds like a really lame place to go Christmas tree shopping but options are pretty limited when you have our income. They had like three to choose from and in typical fashion I wanted the first one I saw. A little 4 footer for $25. I thought it was perfect, but Jered, being the rational spender, said we should look at Big Lots first.. but not that night, he was starting to feel sick again..




The next night, we went to Big Lots and there it was. A six footed, sparsely branched, beauty. There was like nine inches in between each set of branches but I was in love. Plus, it was only $20 dollars. What a deal! After buying some wrapping paper and a little craft, (we love craft nights) namely a do-it-yourself paper Christmas Village, we were off to trim the tree! It was sooo fun decorating the tree together! I got a little excited with the lights.. I put like four full strands of lights on the little guy, some people I’ve showed pictures to (yes, it’s the background on my phone) think it’s one of those nasty frocked white trees because it looks so light. Not so, it just takes up about as much electricity as those fancy department store trees. One tenth of their size, same amount of lights. We keep tying to fall asleep with the lights on but one of us always ends up getting up in the middle of the night to turn it off.. it’s just too dang bright!

By the time we finished the tree, it was like 11:30, but I wasn’t finished. I decided I couldn’t go to sleep until there was at least one wrapped present under the tree. Luckily, I went a little crazy on Black Friday so there were plenty of presents to wrap. With one big present and a cute little box wrapped I was satisfied. What a great night!


Other fun festive things we’ve done have included things like going to a live nativity. We went with Grandma Poots, Jered’s little tiny grandma. It was soo cool! Real lambs and sheep and Mary even rode in on a live donkey! They do it at a church and they really go all out. It was beautiful! After the show, you go into the church and they have hot coco and cookies and a ton of nativities set up from all around the world. Nativities are like my favorite thing so I loved it! They’re grandma Poots’ favorite thing so I was in good company. Jered was a great sport and held our stuff while we walked around chatting about how much we loved them. I took picture of about 75% of them… what I’m going to do with those pictures I’m not sure.. 

Also, we went to his aunt’s ward Christmas party where they had this family of seven disabled kids do the Nativity.. talk about bringing in the true spirit of Christmas! They were so sweet. We talked to them after and they were the sweetest kids. I’m really glad we got to see that.

Next was making our Christmas village! I wanted to make it like the next day after we bought it, but Jered wanted to wait til Sunday because it thought it would be a "good Sunday activity."  I think he was right and I'm glad he talked me into it, because Tay had come over to visit and ended up staying for dinner and village making.  We watched a Muppet Christmas Movie on youtube and drank hot chocolate while we made the little village.  The Christmas tree was on and it was pouring down rain outside... can you get any better than that?! It turned out so cute!  I was trying to take cute pictures of it, but since Jered is a lot better at that than me, so he took over. He got some good ones, although I can't say I was too much help.  I lay down to watch and by the time he got done, I was out cold.