O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

I love Christmas! Last night was so much fun. The Christmas devotional that our church gives each year was broadcast from Salt Lake City, Utah. It's only an hour long, but includes short talks & music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir & Orchestra at Temple Square. It is always beautiful, and is such a nice segue into the Holiday season. Last night was the first time that I have not watched it from a church. Mike & I opted to watch it via the internet from the comfort of our couch, so we put on our pj's and slippers (I have big fuzzy pair of sheepkins that I'm obsessed with & Mike doesn't really wear slippers I suppose), turned on the Christmas lights on top of our hutch & hooked up the laptop to our stereo system. Mike made me sing along to all of the Christmas carols. I loved it!

For family home evening tonight, Mike & I went to buy a Christmas tree. I was so excited all day long and sang the whole way there! We were lucky to find the perfect tree at the same location we did last year. The man even remembered that we live on Wall Street! Our apartment is quite small, so appropriately enough, we have a small tree!

The tree rides the subway

The tree rides the elevator with Mike

We have a "tradition" (if two years in a row counts) of buying a Christmas ornament with the year on it. We debated between this snowflake & a gemstone "2006". We decided that our tree should not look like Vegas. We have a few other Christmas traditions... If we are going off of last year, then we will be so excited for Christmas that we will open our gifts to each other 10 days ahead of time! We are adults now- we can do whatever we want! It is also a tradition that Mike puts the Christmas lights on the tree. He is very good at this, and insists that it is done flawlessly. Tonight, this required wrapping and unwrapping the tree with lights 4 times. The end result looked beautiful. This is why Mike is in charge of the lights, and not me. Mike is also in charge of making Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate during the Christmas Season. We will need to make the investment this week in the marshmallows (from WS) to go along with this. They are expensive, but very much worth it. Marshmallows in hot chocolate absolutely must be a tradition for the Whiting family. Finally, we are obsessed with the Spiced Wassail candle made by Salt City Candle Company. I'm not sure if this counts as a tradition, as we like it so much that we stock up on them each holiday season so that we can burn them all year long.Hudson family traditions include sleeping in & making crepes for breakfast. (This is something I hope that the Whiting family will eventually choose to adopt). December 25th is typically spent at the cabin at Priest Lake. Each year the Whiting family goes to an area called "God's Acre" in New Canaan on Christmas Eve. This is an area in the town where there are several churches. The town band plays & everyone gathers to hold candles and sing carols. I've never spent a Christmas in New Canaan. I'm excited to participate this year. I'm sure it will be beautiful.

Because we are young & do not have a large ornament collection, we have opted to go with straight silver. In a few years when we have the space (we're keeping our fingers crossed), we will add some color. Maybe some red balls? Until we have more space (storage, and otherwise), we are keeping it simple.

Merry Christmas!