Christmas-time is here!

I feel very motivated this Christmas. Motivated to focus on and soak every drop out of this season in which we celebrate God coming to earth to give us life. Last year Christmas just kind of came and went. I think it had something to do with it being our first solo Christmas away from family. Kind of lonely and sad to be honest. I realized last week that if we were going to really do Christmas this year, we were going to have to make it happen ourselves.

I keep hearing about Advent on some of the blogs I read, so we've been giving it a shot. We haven't quite found the right study yet (maybe I should start researching before December next year :) but being reminded everyday to really focus on Jesus' coming and what it means to us has been really incredible.

We watched The Nativity Story a few nights ago and have plans to watch The Star of Bethlehem with some friends soon. (The guy that does the Star of Bethlehem presentations is going to be in College Station Dec. 23. We highly recommend it!)

The season is starting to kind of take on a mind of its own and I'm LOVING IT!

We decided to really festive-up the apartment this year.

We got our first real tree!!!

We've never had a real tree as a couple or even an artificial one taller than 24 inches, and decided that THIS would be the year we officially deck our halls.

We called around and found that Mr. Bricolage had some real trees for sale. Only a 30 minute walk to get there.... in the freezing cold.

Consider it done.

The chosen one. (And our lovely nuclear power plant in the background.)



Here we go.



The walk home wasn't quite so much fun as the walk there, but it was pretty exciting thinking about getting home to decorate our new little friend.

As we were walking we texted Josh and Amy to come over for tortilla soup and to decorate tree Sandoz.



Clay has decided that we shall never cease to tell our future children how easy they have it. "Why, back in our day, we didn't have fancy cars to lug our Christmas trees home for us. We had to stumble for miles and miles through the snow to ol' Mr. Bricolage, only to have to carry the darned thing on our shoulders all the way back home."

Yes, our kids will thank us for this Christmas.

We had to split up so I could find a tree-stand, so Clay muscled the final quarter-mile himself. Can you see my little tree-carrying man crossing the bridge?



Clay and Josh did the hard labor while Amy and I strung popcorn and buttons into garland.



I like this picture because Josh just got stabbed by some incredibly sharp needles.



The finished product.





It's Christmas-time, friends!