It's Beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

I can't believe how quickly people turn from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It all seems to go so fast. One moment the women are rushing for the biggest turkey and the next they are after the socks at Fred Meyer. We are in our home and everything is in order finally. We have our tree up and decorated...it makes it look so homey. I love the warmth the fireplace brings and the smell of hot cider. Josh already put up the outside lights which welcome us home during those late youth group nights.
Although it seems that one holiday ends and another begins, I know that this Christmas I'm thankful for a lot of things. Josh and I have gotten to spend time with both of our families, friends too. We have good jobs, a warm home. This is also our first Christmas married. We're looking forward to having some relaxed, peaceful time together. As I get ready to bring in some of our cherished traditions, I wish you all a very blessed season as we get ready to celebrate the God of the universe becoming a babe to save us all.

We have most of the painting in our house finished now and we just moved a lot of the furniture, with the help of our small group, last night. I must confess that after 20 plus hours of painting and ripping off wall paper until my fingers no longer moved, I had my doubts that it would ever look good enough to have people see it! But, not to fear, it looks great now and we're so excited to start our new life there. We just have a couple more rooms...Paint is a lot more fun to look at than actually going through the process of putting it on. The Lord's provision is just pouring abundantly on us right now. I'll put pictures up later.

Home 1...2...3...4...5

1. We sign closing papers on Wednesday the 8th

2. We paint almost the whole house on Saturday the 10th-Tuesday the 14th

3. We move in on Wednesday the 15th-Saturday the 18th

4. We turn over our apartment on Sunday the 19th

5. We sleep really well because it's all over