It's been a busy two and a half months since the wedding. We arrived back in Dallas on a Sunday night after our honeymoon, worked a few days, then went down to Bay City for Thanksgiving with the Siebens. Thanksgiving means two things to my husband: football and overeating. I mean REALLY overeating...like it's a competitive sport. The whole family got together at Uncle Shawn & Aunt Monica's house and we had a great time. We headed back to Dallas the next day because Anthony had work.
We decided to have our own Christmas by ourselves for our first year. Although it was hard to be away from my family for the first time on Christmas, it really was special for us. We bought a real Christmas tree and decorated it at the beginning of December. Here is our lovely first tree together:
If you look very closely, you can see Anthony's "special tree-topper"...my garter. :)
Scott, Kathy, Lea, and Daniel came over the morning of Christmas Eve for brunch and exchanging gifts. We had a great time!
Later that night Anthony and I watched "It's a Wonderful Life". It is my favorite movie of all time, and I cry every single time I watch it. I don't watch it except at Christmas-time though, because somehow it doesn't have quite the same effect. I'd like to make that movie a family tradition of ours throughout the years.
It snowed on Christmas Eve, so this was the view outside our window on Christmas morning. Some of it had melted already, but I'll take a white Christmas any way I can get it!
Christmas morning we slept in and then opened our gifts to each other. We didn't go all out with gifts because we had just had the wedding and we were incredibly blessed with gifts, gift cards, and money. There wasn't much that we really needed, so we did smaller gifts for each other. After that we watched our wedding DVD. It was so great to watch it because the wedding day itself really did fly by. It was neat to slow down and take in the things that I might have missed before. That evening we called and spoke to our families while I made Christmas dinner.
Here is our delicious and juicy roasted chicken:
And the quintessential sweet potato casserole that pretty much equals Thanksgiving and Christmas in my mind, plus green beans with roasted red peppers and bacon (both my Mom's recipes...thanks Mom!):
Anthony is ready to show this meal who's boss:
Our first Christmas dinner together:
All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas! Anthony had to work on New Year's Eve, but when he got home around 11:00 p.m., I made pancakes (the recipe off the cover of Southern Living....it's heavenly). We decided that this would be a New Year's family tradition of ours.
Anthony and I have both been sick a couple of times in the past month or so. That's been kind of a bummer, but we've just taken it easy and watched 4 seasons of "House" when one of us is under the weather. Other than that, I've been working on getting the apartment fully set up & decorated, a project which I am basically done with now. I'll post pictures in my next post. It has been really fun making our first place feel like a home. Some other post-wedding projects have been sending thank-you notes and beginning the process of changing my name, etc.
Well, that's about it for now. Hope you enjoyed the update! :)
