learning to fly: it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

i.love.christmas.
hands down, my favorite holiday.

part of it certainly is that my top love language is gift giving. i love finding the perfect gifts. my brother and i have an unspoken competition each year to see who can give the best gifts to our parents and grandparents. (usually i win. though he is always in a more stable financial situation, i go for the homemade gifts. no competition.)

we got a real tree this year. fly boy grew up with fake trees. i grew up with real trees. last year we used his almost-real-looking-fake tree. while it was very nice to not have to water the tree, or worry about it drying out while we traveled, i ~~insisted~~ politely asked that since we were moving to florida this year and there would be zero chance of getting snow at christmas, at least the house had to smell like christmas. somehow, cough cough, the fake tree didn't make it in the move from delaware to florida.

as my brother pointed out, it will be fun to see how high our electric bill is this month.

yes, lucy has her own stocking. she is an essential part of the family.

probably my favorite christmas decoration...the twig reindeer. fly boy's least favorite. these may have been a last minute addition to our wedding registry last year that fly boy had no knowledge of. in general, when creating a wedding registry, i highly recommend working together to choose items for your house. in our case, we had some very generous guests, and while fly boy was out on a mission in the middle east or somewhere far away, i needed to add some more items to the registry. the twig reindeer made the cut. i honestly didn't think anyone would buy us christmas decorations, but knew we could get 10% off after the wedding. i was thrilled when the massive boxes arrived at our doorstep a few weeks after the wedding. my hope is that that one day fly boy will love the deer as much as i do.