Hark How the Bells! (or "You Know It's Winter in Baker When...)

Geeze, it's not even December yet, and we are thoroughly enmeshed in the Christmas spirit. On Wednesday, Nathan and I got our Christmas tree from my parent's property. Of course, what should have been a simple and quick outing turned into a two-hour long exodus when our dog took off chasing some of the deer that frequent my parent's "back forty". But we finally tracked him down (20-30 min later), found our tree (after much hemming and hawing), and got it home. Bandit, being wet and covered in burrs, got to ride in the back of the truck with the tree on the way home...a lot of cute pictures will be added, I just haven't had a chance lately to upload any photos from my camera.

While Nathan was back at work, I succeeded in getting the tree into the tree stand and into our house. I ended up having to trim some of the top of the tree off because it was taller than our 8' ceilings. After I got out of rehearsal, Nathan and I turned on Home Alone 2 (a tradition of Nathan's), made some hot chocolate, and decorated our tree. Our house smells SO GOOD! I used all the limbs I had to trim off (otherwise the tree would have taken up our entire couch area) to decorate around our nativity scene and various other places around the house. I honestly wish I could decorate like this year-round, but then I guess it wouldn't be as special. It's a good thing we got a big tree this year, because between Nathan and I we have a TON of ornaments. This is only going to get worse as my family has a tradition of my mom buying my dad and I a new ornament each year, and I've carried that on. Here's Nathan's ornament for the year:



Ha ha ha, and it's so true! Thankfully he got a kick out of it!


There are now huge piles of snow down the middle of all of the streets in Baker. These will eventually become large berms which will remain until we have a major melt in the spring. For those of you who are familiar with Baker, those piles are a welcome sight because they mean that it's truly winter! I actually missed those piles of snow when I was on the other side of the state. This morning marked the first appearance of the piles of snow. And yes Carly, I'll take pictures of Main Street for you. ;) Everything here is now covered in a couple of inches of snow and we're suppose to get even more in the next couple of days. Right now the sky is that steel grey color, so it looks like the entire world is encompassed in various shades of white.

Other than all that, life has been pretty straight forward. My days off were filled with decorating, attempting to pick up after the effects of decorating (still have a ways to go on that), rehearsals, two loads of dishes and four (yes, FOUR) load of laundry. But all that laundry meant that we got to sleep in clean sheets last night. Which leads me to my next, and last, point...

I firmly believe that one of the best feelings in the world is climbing into a bed of clean sheets/pillow cases after having showered, shaved your legs, covered yourself in lotion, brushed your teeth, and dried your hair. You're clean, your bed is clean, all the sheets are straight and not crumpled. It's lovely. If I had the time/energy/money, I think I would wash our sheets every day!