Christmas is watching Charlie Brown Christmas with your husband while you eat grilled cheese for lunch.

Hounding your mom for recipes like cinnamon rolls and rocky road to make your apartment feel like home.

Ringing bells like crazy with your sunbeams at church while they belt out "Stars Were Gleaming"

Insisting that Christopher stay away from the guest room, laundry room, and entry way cupboard where unwrapped gifts are hiding. Since these place cover major square footage in our apartment, he is getting anxious for me to buy some wrapping paper.

Searching far and wide for Bendaroos and finally finding them on Amazon where they were previously sold out. Yay for having such great sisters to give presents to!

Texts from Jessica about Christmas songs I miss hearing so much at the MTC. :)

Magnolia's grill--the famous restaurant here in NC where Christopher and I are going for dinner on the night of our little Christmas party.

Appreciating the fact that Christopher gets enough time off from school that we can spend so much time with our families this year. We can't wait to see everyone.

Setting up and decorating a Christmas tree in a beautiful new apartment. When I turn on the lights every night it doesn't matter that the temperature hit 75 during the day. It feels like Christmas is really here!

A close-up of some of our decorations for Mom. :)

Thanksgiving

We had the best Thanksgiving. Really. We got to play with Christopher's family in Memphis and then spend a day in Nashville with my sister. We played with babies, ate ridiculous amounts of food, got stuck in even greater amounts of ridiculous traffic, studied GRE vocab during the traffic, and loved every minute of it (Maybe not the traffic.) We really appreciate our awesome families and their genorosity!

Maybe this is what held up traffic. Ha ha.

One of the best parts? Coming home to our spanking new apartment. We've been working on it ever since and it looks beautiful. My advice for anyone who is renting a little place? The first day that you move in, invest in this showerhead. It's less than $20 at Home Depot and it will change your life. The showerhead that our apartment complex installed is a joke! But Christopher put this one in the other day and it. is. the best. Now I totally get the appeal of living in your shower.

We're putting up our Christmas tree tomorrow, so pictures are coming!