Once Christmas rolls around, Travis and I will have been married for six months. Half a year people! One of my prayers going into this military marriage was that we would be able to spend our first Christmas together. I prayed that Travis wouldn’t get deployed within that first year. So far, my prayers are being answered and we will definitely be able to spend our first Christmas together. I’m very thankful and my heart goes out to those couples who won’t get that privilege.
Travis and I both love Christmas — the decorations, the music, the baking, the church services, the festivities, seeing family, giving and receiving gifts, and most importantly remembering our Savior. I usually never want to start anything Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but this year I was just too darn excited! Plus, Thanksgiving was late this year, right? We knew we’d be going home to Indiana for Christmas, so we wanted to spend as much time with our own Christmas decorations as we could.
In the middle of November, we headed to the stores for all our Christmas needs! (Yes, this post is almost a month late in being posted!) We bought our very first Christmas tree, some lights, and a stocking (for Travis). We put up our Christmas tree together with Christmas music playing and candles lit. The strange part was we had our balcony door open because it was so hot! We’re still getting used to this southern Georgia weather!
Back home, my mom uses this beautiful angel as her tree topper. I absolutely love it, and one year she bought me one. Unfortunately, it’s still at my parents’ house in my childhood closet. So this year, we bought a pretty star to put on top. Actually, I really love it!
I put the tree skirt underneath and put my already-wrapped gifts underneath. Yes, I’m way ahead and have several gifts bought and wrapped. I’m a major planner, get-ahead-of-schedule kind of person. I just can’t help it!
Travis began wrapping the lights around our tree, and that’s when we realized we did not buy enough Christmas lights. They barely made it halfway up the tree, and we weren’t even going all the way around! It was pretty comical!
We decided to head back to the store so we could finish that same evening. We bought two more boxes of lights and Travis finished putting them on while I made some buckeyes — one of his favorite treats! The buckeyes didn’t turn out great (it was my first time making them) but the tree looked beautiful!
The next day after church, we added the ornaments we had. We have five ornaments right now. One we received as a gift the year we got back together, one we received as a gift after our engagement, one was a wedding gift, one is from our honeymoon and the football was a gift I received last year. All of these ornaments have special meaning to us. I really want a tree where each ornament has a memory connected to it. We plan to get an ornament from every vacation we take or for each big life event. For now, though, we filled the other spots with shiny Dollar Tree ornaments!
Here’s our completed Christmas tree (thanks to self-timer!) and our stockings hung up on the wall next to it.
And here’s a special treat for our family. Look what you’re getting for Christmas!
If you don’t see your name, it means we’re still deciding whether you’ve been naughty or nice! 🙂 Just kidding! Out of something like 22 gifts, we only have two left to get! Now, we just have to figure out how to get them all on the plane!