It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

This weekend while Hunter was off on a "boys only" trip, I talked my sweet mother into coming down to Atlanta to keep me company so that we could do all things Christmas together- just like old times. Despite the threat of an apparent "arctic blast" (per Weather Channel's wording, not mine, but I agree they were correct on that description!) looming over us all weekend, she made the haul down to see me. I am so thankful for the time that we had to spend together this weekend, as there are usually so many different things going on that there is very little time left for just us to spend together.

I'm going to put it out there that although I missed my husband terribly (I'm such a baby when he's out of town), this weekend was pretty much as close to perfect as possible in my world. We shopped, ate, decorated our real tree, baked cookies, wrapped gifts, watched Christmas movies. Wash, rinse, repeat. All things near and dear to my heart during the Christmas season.

I had yet another cookie swap on Sunday, and my sweet mother helped me to bake and bag 9 1/2 dozen cookies. That equals 114 cookies. 114 cookies. But who doesn't love a good cookie swap?

At one point on Saturday evening, my living room turned into Santa's workshop. A very messy Santa's workshop, but there are so many things right about this picture that I can hardly complain about the mess- our beautiful tree, a fire in the fireplace, my mom, presents galore, and although you can't see it- The Santa Clause trilogy (who knew they made 3 of those movies??) was on ABC Family.

And thank goodness my mom was here to also be my delivery elf. All of these packages were delivered to Kentucky in her car for me. Can you imagine all these gifts + Hunter's family gifts + luggage + Sage in my Honda making the trek to Birmingham, and then to Kentucky? There's no possible way we could have fit everything in the car without having to put Sage in Hunter's lap in the front seat. We all know that Sage would be totally beside herself if this actually happened, however, her annoying side would quickly come into play, I'm sure of it.

Finally! Our real tree is decorated, and doing its job of making our house look like and smell like Christmas is finally here!

And this is our more pitiful not-so-real tree. It's obviously a work in progress. The ornaments on this one are a collaboration of ornaments passed down from the Shepherd family, and those that we've been given since we've been married. My friend Jessica has inspired me to start collecting ornaments on our vacations and just other fun times in our lives when she showed us her tree in this post. I'm kind of sad that I didn't start doing this when we first got married, but we've got a lifetime left to do this, right? I think its a great idea to have a sentimental tree with all these reminders of happy memories that you've had together.

This is one of our "first Christmas" ornaments given to us with a wedding gift by one of my mother's friends.

I love this ornament that Hunter's parents gave us last year- it was perfect since we went on to win the National Championship a few weeks later!

This was attached to the bow on one of our wedding gifts, and I've always thought it was so pretty.

Another cute first Christmas ornament, given to me by Marissa.

Maybe next year we will have a few more sentiments to admire!