The Holidays!!!

Our stocking filled for St. Nics day

Our tree decorated, and yes I know there is nothing at the bottom, my husband still believes that it is better for Austin this way.

The day of the Iron Bowl--I know Auburn lost, but this was way before the game even started.

Okay, so if you really know me, you know my feelings about Christmas and everything, but I don't believe many people on here really know that about me, so I'm going to just say that I don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but just as a national holiday. I don't want to get in some crazy fight with someone on my blog about this, but I just need to put that out there. If you want to discuss this further, I am happy to sit down and discuss my feelings with you, I'm just not going to do that on the internet.

So disclaimer out of the way--we are officially decorated for Christmas at our house! We have our two trees up, which I love because growing up we never had one, and I just think they are so much fun, and I don't even care that we are never actually here on the holiday to stick presents under them! Dan even put lights up on the outside of the house, because he always did that at home and feels like that is his part in the decorating. We went out and bought a few more things to put here and there, but I still never feel like its done, but I always have to tell myself to just wait till next year because if I buy everything this year, I will just want to replace it next year with something different! On that note though, is anyone else dissappointed with the decorations out there this year? Everything I see just isn't what I'm looking for at all! So I guess that helps to reduce the urge to decorate further!

Well this past weekend was St. Nicholas day* and I remembered from when I was a kid how my friends would talk about it. The celebration of St. Nics day isn't very popular around our country but it is very popular in countries like Germany, and since I come from an area that is highly populated with people of German decent, it is still celebrated by many families in our area. So thinking back on this, got me to thinking how we never get to use our tree or stockings and I thought, "Hey, why not surprise the fam with St. Nic day!" So I went out last week and sneekily bought things to fill our stockings up with. Austin was easy and then Dan was super easy too, so it took a lot less time than I thought. It also gave me a great opportunity to buy myself the new Narnia movie, sinced I've been dying to see it since it came out in theaters. So I planned on having the stockings filled on Saturday morning when we all woke up, it would work out great because Dan had duty Friday night, so I didn't have to worry about him finding out until he got home. Well I ended up doing it a day early on Friday because, of the way things worked out, but everyone was surprised and we now have a new family tradition. When I told Dan I wanted to do it every year, he thought it was a great idea. Now we just have to try and get it to work every year on the 6th of December! :-) This should be super easy, since we can't even get it to work on a year when it is on a Saturday and Dan is just in training--if you get my sarcasm! ;-)

We still need to take a picture of us with the tree, but I have some of it all decorated. And just after Dan put it together, before we even decorated it so I will leave you with those. Actually, I guess I added them wrong and they are at the beginning so sorry! This is my first real post on here, so I guess I shouldn't expect everything to work out exactly as planned.

*St. Nicholas Day is the 6th of December, the day in which St. Nicholas died, it is celebrated by people leaving their stocking/socks or shoes out at night and waking up to them being filled. This is not a super detailed description, just enought to get you by--google it if you want to know more.