Christmas Festivities

I love doing Christmas-y things every year..... and really, who doesn't? This year was no exception. One of my favorite things to do around this time of year is look at all of the Christmas lights. Well, there aren't very many houses in our neighborhood, and as a result, not a lot of Christmas lights. However, Michael's school is SO festive and has some of the prettiest lights I've ever seen on a school campus. He surprised me by taking me there to look around.

Then we came home and made a gingerbread house. It's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I made it all from scratch. (Ha, yeah right. Thank you, Wal-mart, for selling gingerbread house kits! They are very handy!) This is the finished product, which made a cute decoration. And Michael made the tree on the back of the house, which he was very proud of. :-)

Growing up, we always had our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, so after Michael got off work on Christmas Eve we had a yummy feast including ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and crescents.

Christmas was fun too. We woke up early, opened our presents, emptied our stockings, talked to family, and saw the third Chronicles of Narnia movie. We also had a white Christmas- brr!!

Showing off my presents.

Michael showing off his presents.

I love our matching PJ's. Thanks mom!

I really needed a new earring holder, so I'm glad I got one. Michael thinks I have too many earrings. Is that even possible?!

Anyway, the reason we stayed in Nashville for Christmas is because we're going home to LA for a few days next month for my little brother's homecoming. Yay! The whole family will be there, so we're very excited!!!

Winter Woes

I hate the cold. Like, I really, really hate it. Being too hot is uncomfortable, but being too cold is just miserable. Ever since moving away from California I can't even enjoy the fall season properly because I know that in just a few short months the worst season of all will rear its ugly head. I absolutely love Christmas, but Irving Berlin (he wrote "White Christmas") had it all wrong. Nothing is more magical than sunshine and flip flops. Yes, even on Christmas.

Growing up, my family always traveled in the summer, so it was a long time before I ever experienced snow and freezing weather. When I went to BYU, I was actually excited for it to snow because I thought that it would be this amazingly cool thing. The first time it snowed, I admit that I was excited. I grabbed my roommate and my camera and took this picture:


This is pretty much the only picture that exists of me being in the cold and enjoying it. :-) After experiencing frozen limbs and some seriously nasty falls, it didn't take me long to make my Facebook status something like, "Carly hates fluffy show, wet snow, slushy snow, icy snow, powdery snow, slippery snow, muddy snow, white snow, and yellow snow."

I thought that leaving Utah and coming to Nashville would mean warmer winters. I am very sad to say that it's not any warmer. If anything, it's even colder!!! I don't know if it's the humidity or the wind chill or what, but it has suddenly gotten ridiculously cold here. Obviously it's not the coldest place in the country, but I was just hoping for it to be slightly warmer. And it's not even officially winter yet! I told Michael that as soon as he's done with school, we have to live somewhere warm. I am way too wimpy and whiny for cold weather.

I know, I know- just call me Mr. Scrooge. At least there is a lot making me smile despite the weather, like this:

Merry Christmas from Michael and Carly!

Thankful

Thanksgiving this year was so much fun! It was also a great opportunity for me to reflect on how blessed I have been, especially this last year. I really am so lucky. Out of the hundreds of things I have to be thankful for, I think I am most thankful for the Gospel and my family. I have the best husband in the world and I'm so glad that I get to be with him forever. We both come from great families too, and we were lucky enough to get to spend Thanksgiving with Michael's sister and her family. They drove down here from Detriot (in horrible traffic!) and spent the weekend with us.

I am not the best cook in the world. I am learning, but cooking Thanksgiving dinner was so intimidating to me. Luckily, Michael decided to be the confident one and offered to be in charge of the turkey. When he asked if he could cook it in maple syrup (ew! and heck no!) I wondered what in the world I was thinking for letting him be in charge of the main dish, but other than the syrup thing, he did a fabulous job! Here's the proof:

Michael's sister and brother-in-law helped guide him through the preparation.....

.... and it ended up great! :-)

As embarrassing as this is to admit, I think I probably did the least amount of cooking out of everyone! Yikes. Even the girls made some delicious dishes! I justify it by saying that it's because everyone was just so helpful that there ended up not being a whole lot left for me to do. :-) Next year, I am conquering that turkey on my own!

Thanks to our tiny table with six people crowded around it, we had to use our coffee table as the food table. Other than having to kneel down to get our food, it worked fine. :-)

We spent the rest of the weekend showing them the sights of Nashville, shopping, seeing the new Harry Potter movie, and hanging out.

Michael and Leah

We tried to make it look like we were holding up the pillars...

I think I moved, which is why it's blurry. Oops.

Downtown

The girls also helped me decorate our little Christmas tree. So much fun! One day, we will have a tree that is not oddly skinny and crooked. :-) Here it is all decorated and pretty:


Thanks Cory, Karen, Natalie, and Leah for coming to see us! It was great to have visitors!

Wedding Pictures!

Happy 3 months to us! And what a wonderful 3 months it has been! :-) Here are a few of my favorite wedding pictures.

Louisville!!!

A few weeks ago Michael asked me if I wanted to go to up to Louisville, KY for a day. His really good friend lives there and since it's only a couple hours away he wanted to go visit the city and catch up with his friend. I had never heard a thing about Louisville so I was in no rush to go, but then Michael told me that his friend had extra tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance show and had invited us to come along! I absolutely love So You Think You Can Dance, so I was beyond excited and couldn't get to Louisville fast enough!

Michael's friend, Ryan, and his girlfriend, Chasity, had a wedding to go to for most of the day before the show but me and Michael still decided to get up early on Saturday and spend the whole day there. Michael wanted to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory and I had done a little research on the 'tourist-y' things to do there so we had a full day planned.

The drive there seemed really quick and the scenery was beautiful!! These pictures don't even do it justice.



As soon as we got there we headed to Thomas Edison's house. We learned a lot there and had fun hearing about all of his inventions.

Michael trying to send me a message in Morse code on the telegraph in Thomas Edison's house.

After this we headed into downtown, found somewhere to park, and went to the Muhammad Ali museum. The museum is huge!! It's also really interactive and fun. I think my favorite part was the boxing ring. :-)

Michael had fun with the punching bag.

So did I! :-)

After exploring downtown a little more, we walked over to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. The only thing I really knew about Louisville Sluggers was what Carrie Underwood had told me, ("I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights.....") so I learned a lot at this museum too. I figured that when they told us we would learn how the bats are made, they would let us look into the factory through a glass window. Instead, they took us right into the factory and walked us all over the place. We saw all kinds of cool stuff, including the machine they use to make the perfect bat for each MLB player who wants it. They wouldn't let us take pictures inside the factory because they were worried about undercover spies, but we still got plenty inside the museum!

Babe Ruth's bat!

Me and Babe Ruth

Michael holding Mickey Mantle's bat. I have no idea who that is but Michael thought it was pretty cool!

Outside of the museum

We still had another hour to kill before we met Ryan and Chasity, so we took our time exploring downtown.

We were wondering what was up with all of the horses everywhere and then realized- duh!- the Kentucky Derby!

Then it was finally time for So You Think You Can Dance!!! I was so excited that I could barely sit still! I ended up loving it even more than I thought I would. The dances are even better live than they are on TV. Even the boys enjoyed themselves. :-)

After the show we talked with Ryan and Chasity a little longer and then got in the car and headed back. We were exhausted by the time we got home. We had such a fun trip and hope to be able to go back to Louisville soon!