'Tis the Season!

So Joshua and I got our Christmas tree a few weeks ago, but I've been entirely too busy to post about it! We spent one Saturday shopping for lights and garland...and of course our tree! This year we got a real tree, which was a lot of fun to pick out. It's actually my first real tree ever, so the whole "picking out a tree" thing was new to me. We got our beauty from Home Depot. It's approximately 7 1/2 feet tall and really fat! We absolutely love it. Some pictures are below:

The tree! It's much bigger than it looks in this picture.

A view from below

This ornament was a gift from the Dickens family!

We are so blessed to have such great family and friends. We didn't need to buy a single ornament! Thankfully, half of our tree faces a corner so we didn't have to put ornaments on that side. My mom and grandmother both gave us ornaments as wedding gifts from this great town in Michigan called Frankenmuth. The entire town is dedicated to Christmas all year round. I remember going there as a little girl and picking out ornaments and Christmas figurines. We also got ornaments from some friends of Van and Jannelle for our wedding. And then more from the Dickens family (Joshua's aunt, uncle, and cousins) for Christmas. We are so glad to have such a beautiful tree.

We are going to be spending Christmas in Dallas this year and we are really looking forward to it! We are going to Highland Park United Methodist for church on Christmas Eve and then developing our own Christmas traditions from there! We are so excited to spend not only our first married Christmas together, but our first Christmas together EVER! You would think after dating for 5 years we would have spent one together already, but our families are always in different places. So, this one will be very special for us.

We'll let you know about all of the fun later in the week!

Season of Celebration

So it has been a while since I've posted. Joshua and I have been staying very busy. We have celebrated his birthday, had Thanksgiving in Dallas, and now we are getting ready for Christmas!

This year for Joshua's birthday we got a group of friends together to go to Medieval Times. This was most definitely Joshua's idea and thankfully they had a buy one get one free deal going on...those tickets aren't cheap! We had a good group of 8 and it was a fun evening! We were in the Red and Yellow knight's section and we wore our crowns proudly...and cheered very loudly. Below are a few pictures to document the evening.

All of the knights before the competition

Not sure why Joshua has such a goofy face...

Outside of the castle after the competition!

This year we sent Thanksgiving in Dallas and Joshua's parents came down to be with us! I was able to cook my first Thanksgiving meal (minus the turkey) and everything turned out GREAT! Here is a list of our menu:

1) Honey Baked Ham: Joshua's choice
2) Barbequed Green Beans: Steaban tradition
3) Sweet Potato Casserole (with pecans on top)
4) Deviled Eggs: Vincent tradition
5) Corn: needed another veggie
6) Rolls: gotta have some carbs!
7) Pumpkin Pie: Thanksgiving must have!

Picture of the table (minus some of the food due to lack of table space)


I also got to use our china for the first time!
And finally: Joshua and I with our first married Thanksgiving Dinner!

Friday morning Jannelle and I went shopping. I got a few great pieces for work and the mall was relatively calm! I think we got there as the early birds were leaving and before the afternoon crowd came. Then we all went out to the shooting range and the guys shot the shot gun and then we went and shot pistols. Friday evening we went to dinner at Cuba Libre, one of our favorite places to eat and then we traveled to Fort Worth to go to Billy Bobs, a huge country bar. Jannelle and Van got out on the dance floor while Joshua and I watched...we had no clue how to line dance!

I'll update with more fun Christmas festivities later!