The Compromise

Carson put twinkle lights on one side of our bushes, colorful ones on the other - "One is you, one is me!" he said proudly when he showed me. That's partially true, and it's partially the fact that we only had four boxes left. It looks a little crazy, but there are only two other houses on the entire street that are decorated, so at least we're festive. Maybe next year, we'll break out some icicle light or something (poor Carson). 

By the way, if you want to feel creepy, go outside at dusk, lean against a tree and take pictures of your house with a big camera. Seriously, at the moment I began snapping photos, five cars drove by and hoardes of (okay, six) people decided to come walking by. I wanted to shout out that I lived here but I just let them think whatever they wanted and slipped back in the house feeling guilty.

Our Very First Christmas

We went to Olympia for Christmas this year, so our personal gift unwrapping happened on Wednesday night.

The reason for this is that that's the day that Granddaddy and Grandmamma's presents to us arrived in the mail. 

We opened those and Carson was hungry for more. 

Naturally, I had not wrapped his presents (yes, three days before Christmas... because I had purchased them two days before that), so he went into our room and shut the door, while I wrapped.

Then I called him,

and we unwrapped presents.

Here are our stockings:

And the tree which you've seen a million times, this time with presents

One of his stocking stuffers... 

there's a funny little poem that you can print out with this but I lost it and we don't have a printer...

More stocking stuffers

All of my stocking stuffers... I sense some baking in my near future

Marshmallows

notice the hydration and vitamin C behind Mr. Sickly.

He cut out hearts and had all different sorts of names for me on the tags

I noticed that and I copied the idea (minus the hearts... too hard to freehand)

Thursday...

I was supposed to work 7:45 till 4

But I got a text that said to see if I needed to come in at 9

And at 8:30 another text came, telling  me I had the day off

So we got an earlier start than planned on our trip over the pass

But since we were up to leave at 7:15 anyway, we got gas for the car 

And Carson made a snowman on top of it

Then, we went up the South Hill and looked at Christmas lights.

Yes, in the morning. 

Then we found a cute coffee shop and had espresso and hot chocolate. 

No pictures, I'm afraid. But we did these things.

Afterward, we went to Target to buy Settlers of Catan

And then back home to wrap our gifts for other people

(SO not on top of it... I'm blaming it on the fact that I work a lot, but we all know it's not true)

And of course there are no pictures of Christmas Eve

But we girls got our nails done (mine are this color)

While the guys went to Cabela's or somewhere guyish 

And then we returned to play Settlers and watch Christmas movies

And after that, we played Catch Phrase and telephone pictionary 

(they are now selling telephone pictionary as an actual game-game... Scribblish... but we just played with regular pieces of paper)

On Christmas day, Carson was still a bit too sick to go to Seattle, where the Bay side was celebrating, so we just hung out at the house

Then we opened gifts (at 1pm or so...)

And headed to the Jenkins' for Christmas dinner

Here's my new owl cookie cutter and some cookies (Carson received a bear)

Some festive gingerbread men

Chewbacca, the fattest cat I've ever seen 

Watching Christmas movies once more

Playing Rook

Eating, eating, eating (we snacked on this while waiting for the real food)

More snuggling with Chewy

Norman, the dog

Merry Christmas!

Settlers of Catan

Snuggling with Earl, his new bear

We left Olympia on Sunday morning at 6:30.  

Which was TOO EARLY (especially during a lazy holiday weekend) but I sat in the back of the car and slept for a good portion of the trip, which ended at 11:45 in front of our building.

Where we dumped out our stuff in the living room and proceeded to take advantage of some day-after-Christmas clothes shopping. Carson obtained two new sweaters and a polo shirt, while I ended up with a new sweater, shirt and pair of jeans. 

And then we returned home to continue being lazy. 

And I just love this little part of our house, so I'm sharing a picture...

Hope your Christmas was merry and wonderful!

Decking our Halls

On our way back from the West side on Wednesday, we picked out a tree

The decision process was literally like 2 minutes, and we gave up the cutting down idea and just bought one

So no pictures. 

That night, we unpacked and decorated. It was a big, huge mess. But it's finished!

The windows are decked in colored lights

 The Christmas tree collection is displayed in lights

(and a wonderful friend gave me the candle I wanted... it smells like Christmas!)

Things are hung and displayed

Even the kitchen is feeling the merriment

Love this Christmas garland!

The tree is more fully decorated, thanks to Target clearance ornaments last year

(and to the left are presents awaiting gift wrap)

It's so bright and festive

And we decided to begin a tradition of collecting ornaments from places we visit.

Displaying wooden shoes from my trip to the Netherlands

And a pretty ball from when I went to China

One of the ornaments I made to decorate my huge and bare tree last year

The park ranger Carson's mom gave me got a ribbon and became an ornament

The ornament we got on our honeymoon

And the room as a whole, minus the other two decorated living room windows

Yikes, what a mess!

The stockings, hung by the sign with care

And my lovely glass bowl, showing off some extra ornaments.