After a very exciting couple of days of travel (including a missed bus, a delayed flight, a missed layover, a debacle with finalizing tickets, and then a cancelled flight) Stephen and I were very happy to finally arrive at his parents' house Sunday night! :) I was amazed to see Stephen handle what could have been a very stressful situation with so much ease. I truly married a saint! (I was also extremely grateful for the generosity of my older brother Joseph who luckily lived close enough to where we were stranded that he was willing to pick us up and drop us off at the airport a couple of times, as well as let us stay at his house really last minute!)

Though that put this week off to a shaky start, tonight, while decorating the Christmas tree with Manheim Steamroller blasting in the background - it finally started to feel like Christmas! The Christmas spirit really came to life after a little Christmas Devotional, some Christmas songs around the piano, a family quintent of "Oh, Christmas Tree" on recorders, rounded off with the 4th annual "Sleigh Ride" Christmas tradition.

(The Christmas Eve before Stephen left on his mission, we decided to Skype with our families - his parents delighted us with their amazing piano duet of Sleigh Ride, and then my family "treated" them with a rendition of "The First Noel" on our chimes. :) Stephen made me promise that I would skype his parents on Christmas eve while he was on his mission "until I was engaged." I kept my promise ;))

Remember when I learned my lesson about actually needing to hand the coupons to the cashier when you plan on using them? Well, luckily this time we remembered. So on Saturday evening we walked out of Macy's with 144 Rhodes rolls. OH MY YUM. Thanks to a few cooking successes earlier in the week, I was feeling confident, and on Sunday we decided to try out some Thai Peanut Pizza courtesy of the Rhodes Rolls cookbook we were given as a wedding present! (The other half of the pizza was a Rosmary Potato Chicken that we just kind of made up.)  Rhodes rolls as the crust of a pizza?! Does life get better than that??

I have to confess. Stephen and I do not have a Christmas Tree. I haven't put my nativity up. And the only thing in the house that could be considered Christmas Decor is a little red tree door hanger with some bells that is hanging on a hook on our front door. I'M NOT THE GRINCH OKAY?!!  I really do love Christmas and all the decorations and lights and warm fuzzy things that come along with it...it just doesn't really make sense to spend money on that stuff since we're leaving in less than a week anyway... (So, I guess I'm Scrooge??) Anyway, we did do one thing that was Christmasy and I was pretty proud of it.