Merry Christmas!!!

So the last 48 hours have been a bit of a whirlwind, but we survived. After a little miscommunication (we thought we were supposed to do Christmas Day with Jay's family, but it turns out they had planned for Christmas Eve, the same day that we do Christmas with my parents... awesome), but we made it work, and I think everyone came out unscathed. The good thing is that today, we had absolutely, positively, nothing to do but enjoy the day together, just the two of us. Here are a few pics from yesterday. I hope you all had as great of a Christmas as we did!

Ella in her pretty Christmas dress in front of the tree

Uncle Jay stuck the bow on her forehead and she kept looking up at it. We got a good laugh out of this one!

Me and my adorable niece!

mmmmm.... stuffed pork loin

 My parents outside decorations... yes, that is an 18' tree

My mom thought the purple cauliflower would add nice color to Christmas dinner... and then she added the cheese...

Christmas dinner table

PRESENTS!!!

We did it!!!!

WE PLACED IN THE LIGHTING CONTEST!! YAY!!!!! I'll be honest... I'm a little excited. To say the least. That was my goal this year after we got the landscaping done... to get yard of the month and to place in the Christmas lighting contest, and we did both this year! Sweet!

It was a lot of work, but as I mentioned before, it's worth it to us, even if we didn't place. But placing is the icing on the cake. We placed third, and now have this sign in our yard. And we're more than happy to display it!

Christmas Lights

Tonight is the annual judging of Christmas lights in our neighborhood. They award 1st, 2nd, and 3rde place, and one of these days, we will place. Mark my words.  Everyone says it we should have own last year, but we didn't. And that's OK. While the judging is in the back of my mind when we do put up the lights, that's not the reason I do it. The guy that won last year had a sequencer set up to his lights and you could tune in to 91.1 to hear the music and see how it matched the lights. He did it again this year, so we'll see what happens. Others that have won have inflatables in their yard, and that's just not our style. So, we'll continue to keep it classy and add a few bits of our style here and there. We like it, so as far as I'm concerned, that's all that matters.

Here are a few pics I took tonight. Enjoy!

Outside:

Inside:

Silent Monks performing Hallelujah!

If this doesn't get you in the Christmas spirit, I don't know what will. Hallelujah!!!

Christmas decor 2010

These pictures don't really do it justice, unfortunately, but it's fun. It was a lot of work. My goal is to at least place (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) in the lighting contest. If I don't, watch out. Someone might get hurt!