Christmas...and my husband's gift to me.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

I love the Christmas season.

I love celebrating the birth of my Lord and reflecting on the awesome and completely amazing love of God for us that He would come to earth in human form and live among us in squalor (compared to Heaven!) to demonstrate His love for us. If I ever have children, they will know that the greatest present one could ever receive has been given to them by a Heavenly Father who loves them more than Ethan or I ever could.

In the more superficial realm: I love the Christmas lights, the Christmas music, the decorations on people's lawns, the family togetherness, the hot chocolate...just everything about Christmas. My husband is not as "into" Christmas as I am, but when he married me he made a big effort to be excited about Christmas with me. The past two years we have been together on Christmas Day... before that, I was usually in Colorado working.

My dad was never big on decorating the outside of our house with lights, no matter how much my sister and I would beg. We had grand plans for what we could do with the lights... the grandest of which was "SANTA STOP HERE" spelled out on the roof. He never went for it, and we were always disappointed because the front of our house had such great bushes, and there was just so much potential to transform it into a Winter Wonderland of lights! I had mentioned to Ethan that I was disappointed that I never had a house with a light display to admire as a child... and he remembered. We don't have a traditional house in the sense that we have a yard, etc...but we do have a rather large balcony in a loft building here in Atlanta.

This is what I came home to yesterday.


He has a plastic handcuff in his mouth....that's what he used to secure the lights to the balcony. I guess that's par for the course when you're married to a police officer...



We live on the 3rd floor....and it's quite high. I couldn't even watch Ethan on the ladder since he was in quite the precarious position... I had no fear he would fall because he's much too sure of himself for that, but I'm a girl. I worry about the people I love. I just kept thinking about how guilty I'd feel if he fell off the ladder while putting up an amazing light display for me!

After he finished the light display, we put our Christmas tree up and decorated it with Manheim Steamroller's 1984 Christmas album playing softly in the background. He also bought me a salted caramel hot chocolate from Starbucks to sip on. For a guy who isn't that "in" to Christmas, he sure went the whole nine yards for me! I'm one blessed girl!