Getting Ready for Christmas

I must confess, Pandora has been playing Christmas music in full swing at our house this past week and half. Amazingly, Darrell has been on board with it, and he even discovered a new artist whose Christmas carols he liked so much he went out and got the CD (Straight No Chaser--they've got some really fun Christmas medleys). We started decorating our house Thanksgiving Day, but it just wasn't complete until last Saturday when we went and cut down our tree, which was a fun (but chilly!) experience.
Here we are with our find:

Darrell was able to cut it down pretty effortlessly, much to my appreciation (I took a few unsuccessful pulls on the saw before handing it back to him)

We got it all decorated that evening (with decorations we bought on clearance last Christmas!), and I love the way it looks all lit up!

And of course, we couldn't refrain from using the tripod to take a few cheesy Christmas card-esque photos in front of the tree (don't worry, we aren't actually using these for our Christmas cards)

Darrell was a trooper through the whole process--he had a hard time getting his legs to bend that way, so he just stayed put during the whole ordeal while I kept fiddling with the settings and trying to find a comfortable position for myself. 


And then on Sunday we woke up to this beautiful sight outside!

Now I know, we live in South Dakota, it snows all the time, but this was the first pretty snow we've gotten all year (and truthfully, I don't remember ANY pretty snows last winter. Last winter was miserable). Usually when it snows the wind is blowing thirty miles an hour and it's miserable (like this snowfall), but Sunday morning it was just peacefully dropping little bits of snowy heaven. I was seriously ready for some Christmas festivities on Sunday, so Darrell and I decided to use the afternoon to get some shopping done. We may have ended up buying more stuff for ourselves than for actual holiday gifts...but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. 


Still no update on the car, but Darrell is good and ready to chew their asses when they do call! Apparently, if it's the piece Darrell thinks it is, we're pretty sure we can prove that they damaged it while it was in the shop. Besides, it's just TOO coincidental that the light came on for the first time EVER as soon as we turned the car on in their parking lot. I made sure to tell the guy that when I dropped the car off last night and he just kind of looked at me blankly. Apparently he's not used to getting lip from women about cars. So hopefully good news on the horizon about that!