Christmas Decorating

Growing up my parents gave us Hallmark Ornaments in our Christmas stockings every year. 

I had a bunch of ornaments that needed a new home this year, so we got a live Christmas Tree!! 

 Our Christmas star. It has lights that plug into the tree lights. Thank you Grandma!

We made some ornaments for our tree too. I think these ones have to be my favorite. We made some home made modpodge and cut up some sheet music and glued it around the ornament ball.

 Rudolph is pretty cool too. I shredded brown construction paper to put inside of him.

 For this one, I used some of those rhinestone things that you fill flower vases with, 

and glued them all around it. It's super heavy, but looks pretty cool on the tree.

 Modpodge on the inside and then glitter.

 Attempt at painting on the ornament. I had planned to paint on more of them, 

but after attempting an "H", I decided I'll stick with simple this year.

Our first Gingerbread house together. Next year maybe we'll try to make gingerbread, 

but for now we'll stay with the pre-made kit.

I found this guy on Pinterest. 

Everytime I would look at it, I just laughed. 

So when Curtis was at school studying until midnight, I decided to make him. 

I still chuckle every time I look at our fridge.

I think he's staying up until May.

 And this is my last craft of the season. It's hanging above our mantle.

Merry Christmas!!!

 May we remember the real meaning of Christmas and the gift our Savior gave to us all.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we were planning on going to Philly to see my parents and extended family. We both ended up with Wednesday off so we decided to drive to DC for two nights before heading up to Philly. Since I did my student teaching there, I LOVE DC and it has a special place in my heart. One of my favorite places in DC was the temple. As you're driving on the highway you come around the corner and BAM!!! There's the temple! I LOVE IT! And it's glows! So Beautiful! I wanted Curtis to see it at  night and that's kind of how it fit into our schedule of DC events anyways, so we headed there first Tuesday night. We got there around 10pm and hung out in the parking lot for about a half hour. We were about 3 days early for all the Christmas lights, so we'll have to go back and see those eventually. 

 We started Wednesday morning off bright and early. We went to the Lincoln Memorial first.

 View from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

 Lincoln Memorial

 This is the WWII Memorial with the Washington Monument in the back. I love this memorial. It is breathtaking at night. It is all lite up and the water is beautiful with all the fountains.

 WWII Memorial. The things hanging are stone wreaths. 

Above each wreath is inscribed with the name of a state, territory, or commonwealth of the US. 

 The Washington Monument.

 You can tell it was a gloomy day and it poured on us about a minute after we took this picture. 

The Washington Monument wasn't opened because of the earthquake a few months ago, but we were still able to get up pretty close to it.

 The White House

 National Christmas Tree

They were decorating it while we were there. 

You can see the guy in the crane bucket putting the snowflakes on.

 Natural History Museum

This was the one thing that Curtis really, really, really wanted to go to.

I'm not such a huge museum fan, so I was a little hesitant but it ended up being really cool.

There's so much stuff you can't really even look at it all.

 The Hope Diamond

 The Capital Building

We LOVED our trip to DC. Maybe more for me than for Curtis, but it was really fun! We ate lunch at a burger joint called Good Stuff. DELICIOUS. And then after lunch we headed out to visit with Curtis's friend from when he lived in Minnesota and his family. Thursday morning we headed to Philly, and for some reason did not take ANY pictures... It was wonderful to visit with family though and to remember all that we are grateful for. We're very excited to head to Utah in a few weeks and get to see even more family and friends!