merry & bright

Christmas always goes by waay too quickly. Usually a few days before the actual day I start to realize it's almost over and wish I would have done more: decorated more cookies, given more presents, stayed home longer, put up more decorations, made homemade eggnog, listened to more Christmas carols, hung more garland...All the things I did but not enough. I always find myself thinking, "Next year, I want to..." There's just so much that comes with the holiday, with this time of year. I love every part of it and the warm cozy carefree feelings that tend to follow.

We had a really really great Christmas. Wintery white Christmas in Montana is way too good and I'm thinking it's going to be a very long time before we end the tradition of traveling over to celebrate. We both sat at the table eating dinner tonight and agreed we wished we were still there. We couldn't have stayed longer than the 8 days because Nathan needed to get back to work and really I think it was the perfect amount of time where we didn't wear out our welcome (I think) or get tired of being there.

Now we are preparing for our New Year's trip to Vegas. We are going with 3 other couples on Thursday night. I haven't been to Vegas since I was 16 so I'm thinking this trip will be a bit different than a visit to the M&M factory. It should be a good time I'm sure. I have the week off since I work at a school so I am cleaning up the aftermath of our overly stuffed car, doing laundry and reading for pleasure.

flossing

Tonight I am going to try my hand at homemade caramels-Apple Cider ones to be exact. I am slowly but surely working on becoming a good (key word here...I can cook and bake but I want to be GOOD) cook and baker. Every so often I try a recipe that doesn't turn out so great and I am thankful for my good-natured taste-testing hubby who never complains. Unfortunately I ruined the pecan pie at Thanksgiving and that was a big letdown...I know, that's one that is very basic and shouldn't be so hard, especially since I topped that with an amazing white chocolate pumpkin cheesecake with gingerbread crust...But something went wrong. My goal is a redeeming Christmas pecan pie.

Speaking of all this baking and sweet eating, we had dentist appointments today. The running joke is always that Nathan, when we started dating, had not been to the dentist in like 3 years. I encouraged him to go, both of us expecting many many cavities after years of poor dental health. Surprisingly, he left with NO cavities and the dentist even said his teeth looked great. I left with THREE cavities (my first ever) and got a serious lecture about taking better care of my teeth - even though I had been practicing regular check-ups, brushing regularly and even flossing. Ugh. Nathan has some amazingly perfect spaces between his teeth that make flossing nearly unncessary. I hate it. So today we went to the dentist - he still doesn't floss and still often forgets to brush his teeth - and the dental hygienist not only told him his teeth looked great but that she could tell he had been flossing...and he lied and said he does! What a turd. Luckily the dentist finally (after two years of us going there) also told me that my teeth look good. Sheesh. I have been flossing like crazy.

Tomorrow we are going to get massages! So excited. We are also getting our Christmas tree and making a final decision about whether or not we'll put lights on our house. We only have a couple weeks to enjoy them before we leave for Montana so we need to decide if it's worth it. The neighbors have some simple icicle lights that look adorable with the high peaks of our roofs so we might be easily sold on them. It'd be a loss to not decorate our first home!