O Christmas Tree!

So once upon a time, 2011 came to a close.

Seriously?! Where did this year go? But, here we are at Christmas time!

I LOVE IT!

I love everything about the Christmas season: the music, the food, the decor, the movies, the parties, etc. It's just all so magical!

This is Alex's and my first Christmas as a married couple.

Not our first Christmas together, though...no no no...that happened Christmas of '08.

But I was a broken hearted, fragile, not ready for a relationship girl and he was a hard working, guitar playing to impress Kaycie, missionary guy.

I have a feeling this Christmas will be a little more fun for us. :)

We for sure had to have a tree on our first Christmas!!

I can only remember having a real tree once, due to family members being allergic.

So I do not have the type of memories where you go and pick out a tree.

I remember helping my mother pick out an artificial one at Wal-Mart and my memories include us trying to get that tree up and down out of our attic, which was always quite the task! You have to go from the shelves, to the water heater, to hoisting yourself up in the attic hole. Was definitely quite comedic at times and I have a lot of funny memories surrounding that attic!

Since neither of us are allergic, I decided we needed to go get a real tree!

I was so excited and giddy!

We aren't hard core enough to go chop one down at a tree lot up in the mountains, so we just drove to Smith's Marketplace and rummaged through their selection, which was many.

We finally came to the conclusion of what tree we wanted and bought it! They were having a little sale as well so both the tree, some ornaments, and the tree stand were all on sale!

Alex's poor hands were frozen, but he still strapped it to the top of our Element and we drove it home. Alex carried it up the stairs and once we decided where to put it and got it settled in the stand, we began to decorate.

Except for one little problem. I thought I had enough lights, but...I was wrong. We got a tad over half way up, but we were too tired to venture out that night and the next day was Sunday, so for 2-3 days, our tree looked like this:

This picture doesn't do it justice. I should've taken it at night because it looked so funny! Nonetheless, we were so proud of our Christmas tree!

Eventually I was able to run to the store and pick up another strand so we could finish our masterpiece!

Here she is:

We decided we had already spent enough on Christmas decor so we skipped the tree topper this year...perhaps next year...

I LOVE our tree! I love staring at it with all the other lights off snuggled up next to my husband.

It definitely has brought the Christmas spirit in to our home and I couldn't be more excited for Christmas day to come!

I hope your tree is up! Tis the season! :)