It's the Holiday Season!

Luke and I finished setting up our Christmas tree last night. We put on the Christmas music and made hot chocolate. I love reminiscing over the ornaments - our tree may not be stylized where everything matches, but each ornament has a story. We purchased the tree Sunday night, but it was too wet to put lights on it, and I fell asleep around 9 pm, so we did all of our decorating yesterday. Trying to get the tree felt almost Griswold-like - I almost talked Luke into a tree that upon getting it home, we would have had to do a chop-job on it in order to get it to stand upright in our living room. Thankfully, he's so wise, and talked me into the shorter tree. Now, if we had only realized that skinnier would have been better too. It's quite fluffy!

The dog has been trying to eat the ornaments and lights, so she's spending time outside whenever we're not home.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, even though not quite on the right day. I had to work Thanksgiving day, so we went to see my family Wednesday, had a great dinner, stayed the night, and drove back to Austin Thursday morning. A whirlwind trip, but we were able to have a great meal with the whole family - all of the siblings were there. We're hoping that even though Christmas will be much of the same, we'll be able to catch all of Luke's family this time.

In baby news - I feel her moving around and kicking much more lately. Some mornings I wake up and it seems like she's doing somersaults in there. The roommate has moved out, so now I can start working on the nursery!! First step is to organize everything and get rid of all of the junk. I really don't know how we accumulate so much stuff. Also, they say that second trimester is when you have all of your energy back, plus some, but I'm not feeling it so much. It must be my work schedule and the type of work I do, because I'm exhausted most of the time. And as I get bigger, it's harder for me to move around quickly, and bending over is almost a no-go at this point. It's just too much effort. I know I have a long ways to go yet, but even this small amount of extra weight makes things difficult. What an incentive to stay in shape after the baby is born!

I'm thankful that I have the next couple of days off so I can finish decorating the house for Christmas and get some Christmas shopping done. I'm also fighting off a cold or sinus infection, so I plan on getting some rest as well.

Luke has been super busy with work - he's having to take over work for a gal that left, on top of his regular duties, so he's a little tired right now. Pray that he'll have the strength to get through the next few weeks, until Christmas when he'll have some much needed and much deserved time off.

Oh yes! I passed my 90-day review at work, which means I'm an official employee now. As a perk, we get a night at the hotel, which will be a nice little vacation for us. Not exactly going very far away, but it's a night out of the house!