A little bit of Christmas

Nate and I had a beautiful day yesterday, getting ready for the Christmas season and just spending some time together.

We don't have as much set time together as some couples, because we work opposite shifts, and he only has weekends off every other month. However, it makes the time that we do have together even more precious, so that was why yesterday was so enjoyable.

We went to church and then made some coffee and packed up Novie to head to a local Christmas tree farm to pick out our first tree. We decided this year to get a real tree and then decide if we wanted to continue that each year or get an artificial tree after this.

We went to the tree farm about 15 miles south of where we live and started walking around. Luckily, our tastes matched pretty well, and we decided on a white pine with soft needles that was full and about 6 feet tall.

We attached the tree to the top of our Dodge Journey and headed back home to a waiting tree stand I had picked up at a secondhand store for $2. We put the tree in the stand and tightened the screws, to find that every time we let the tree go it tilted horribly to one side.

A trip to a local hardware store and we came home with a new $15 tree stand that ended up holding our Christmas tree more securely.

We put lights on the tree, ended up with too much left at the top, unwound the lights off the tree, put them back on the tree and set it in place. Then we covered it with the few ornaments that we have - a few we have purchased and many from my childhood that my mom gave us.

While Nate took some of the white lights we have leftover from our wedding and put them on the porch outside, I got all my snowmen and other wintry decorations out and put them around our duplex. We munched on some homemade gingerbread cookies that we had decorated the night before and surveyed our work.

We capped the night off with dinner at a local restaurant, which was free thanks to gift cards, watching "Bad Boys II," and reading some of the Bible together.

It was a perfect date day with the man I love. And now we're ready for the Christmas season to be here!