Last weekend was a wonderfully full, holiday-packed weekend. As busy as it was, it left me very happy and grateful for the Advent season and the community we’re surrounded by.
Friday kicked off with our youth group high school girls sleepover. After meeting for dinner at the Quarry and going to the Trinity Christmas Concert (always one of my favorite events of the holiday season), we spent the night at Haley’s house decorating Christmas cookies (which quickly transformed into Little Mermaid cookies), laughing at a hastily attempted lip dub to “Roar,” and watching a bit of Pride and Prejudice before falling asleep for the night.
Decorating cookies
Christmas cookies
Little Mermaid cookies
Saturday morning, Chip and Matt were kind enough to bring over some breakfast tacos before we all left for the annual Redeemer Christmas boxes outreach event. Here’s a video that was shared based on last year’s turnout. I’m so encouraged that this year we had even more people volunteering than last year and were able to make more boxes in less time. It’s pretty awesome to see so many groups from San Antonio come serve together.
Once we finished Christmas boxes, Chip and I went back to the Behams house before we all packed into Chip’s truck to go get our Christmas trees at Home Depot. Now last year, we went to a cute little Christmas tree farm and bought some (way too expensive) trees. This year, we toned it down a bit and got some serious deals! And let me say, the quality of the trees at Home Depot was really good so be sure to check them out.
Loading up at Home Depot
Chip and I then came home to set up our tree and start cooking our traditional lasagna for dinner. We usually have “something” happen when we’re trying to get our tree up. Our first year as a married couple, we got into a nice little argument over whether or not the tree was straight. I will admit that I had Chip go back and forth half a dozen times in adjusting the tree so his frustration was understandable. Last year was pretty uneventful, but we made up for it last weekend. While Chip would lift the heavy tree up, I was trying to move the base around so we could get the tree in more easily. Unfortunately Chip brought the tree down before I was fully out of the way, which means my right hand was still on the edge of the stand… I’m not going to lie, it definitely hurt, but thankfully my fingers barely even bruised and were just more scraped up than anything. The sacrifices we make for Christmas decorations…
Christmas tree battle wounds
Once the lasagna was in the oven we got started on decorating. This is probably the fullest tree we’ve had so we ran out of lights about halfway through. Thankfully Chip offered to run to Target real quick to get us a few more strands (pretty sure he didn’t want me to go to Target because I totally would have come back with more Christmas decorations). We started putting up a few of our favorite ornaments when Matt and Haley came over to join us for dinner and dessert, which was a coffee cake from Pippa Middleton’s Celebrate book – I’ll be sharing that recipe later!
First Starbucks red cup of the year – perfect for decorating the tree
Wrigley couldn’t believe we ran out of lights
Chip decorating the tree
O, Christmas tree
Wrigs wasn’t ready for the picture
Love these two boys
Redeemer Christmas Party
Sunday evening was the Redeemer Christmas Party, which we always really enjoy. It’s fun to get dressed up, eat a nice meal, listen to a Christmas sermon, and sing along to some jazzy holiday tunes. This year we were able to bring one of my former coworkers and her husband with us and had such a great time catching up with them and hearing all about their sweet baby girl. The Christmas party was a wonderful way to wrap up our very full weekend and also remind us the true reason for this advent season and that however busy we may be with “holiday” events, we don’t make Christmas happen. God does. And for that, I am extremely thankful.
the nance familia 