'tis the season

In a few hours (the operative word being few) Ben and I will be driving to Georgia to spend Christmas with our family down south. We are all ready to go, Ben, I am sure underpacked, and I know I overpacked. It's how we roll. We are so eager to see everyone-- even if it means leaving our White Christmas here. It is crazy to me that it is Christmas Eve, and then...boom... it's Christmas day!

I love Christmas-- for so many reasons. I love buying gifts and wrapping them, finding the perfect (er, sorta perfect) Christmas tree and lighting an evergreen candle daily so the house smells like the first day we brought the tree home, decorating the house, alternating between 3 Christmas-music-all-the-time radio stations, hearing the story of the birth of Christ over, and over, and over again. I love it all. So, when Christmas day comes it is always bittersweet because all this preparation is over in a sense. Although, I think it's not really over, because, "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year!"

So, we've wrapped all of our presents and packed the car- we even took down our Christmas tree. I am sure, in all my life I have never taken down the tree prior to Christmas day, but to avoid fire hazard and also to not have to vacuum up more needles than have already fallen off that tree, Ben dismantled the whole thing. By himself really, which is fantastically helpful and also less depressing for me. It's like it just disappeared like magic, instead of me enduring each painstaking moment of removing ornaments one by one (Ben doesn't have as many feelings as I do about Christmastime, or anything, for that matter... I have a lot of feelings). I have to remember that where we are going there are Christmas trees and that is where we will actually spend Christmas, so it will be perfect!

This is what we've been doing to get into the holiday spirit...

We visited the National Harbour to see some fantastic decorations and the lighting of the tree there. This took place on the coldest night of all time.

Sometimes I get to ichat with Kaley, since she is a little bit farther this Christmas... it's been hard without her (and Nick too) but, hooray for technology!

I tried ice skating. This is the first time I have agreed to go with Ben- he didn't believe me when I said I was terrible. I was, and, as much as I wanted to love it, I didn't. It hurt my feet a lot and I just can't get the gliding thing down. I was happy to spend the time with our wonderful friends-- and Karl was kind enough to try to show me some sweet moves on the ice. I never perfected these.

We celebrated an early Christmas with Ben's family. I even went sledding with the fam. I don't really sled, either. I've gotta say, it was a lot of fun.

And... Sarah and David got engaged! So, that was pretty awesome! When she walked back into the room in tears I will tell you, my first instinct was not "they're engaged!", but I was so glad that was the announcement!

Here's to more Christmas-- because I would like to say, it's only just begun!