It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As promised, here is Christmas post #1.

 One weekend when my parents came to visit they bought us a Christmas tree!

 I was soo excited to put it up I almost didn’t make it until after Thanksgiving, but thanks to Leslie I did. We successfully put up our tree and hung our pretty ornaments on it! My parents brought some of our “special” ornaments and I was excited to add them to the tree, as well.

One thing I’ve learned since moving to Louisiana is that people in Natchitoches love all things Christmas. The downtown area is covered in Christmas lights and every weekend from the end of November until the New Year there are Christmas events and an impressive firework show (yes, EVERY weekend!).

 The first weekend of December is the BIG Christmas festival and my parents came to venture into the madness with Leslie and myself. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as people said it would be, but perhaps it was because of the rainy weather. There were several parades, a craft show, and of course, a huge fireworks show (coordinated with Christmas music).

An alligator pulling Santa!

Parade!

They're riding IN a duck! So cool.

The Christmas excitement continued with several Christmas parties! Our Sunday School class had a party at a restaurant that we had to ourselves. We played Dirty Santa, chatted amongst ourselves, ate some good food, and ended the night with a game of Cranium. Leslie and I have been very blessed by the sweet people in our class and have made some very good friends J. The members of my counseling skills class also grew very close this semester and our professor had us over to her house for a Christmas party! We snacked and played games and just enjoyed each other’s company. Skills was by far my favorite class! We got to practice all of the counseling skills we were learning on our classmates in class and in the school’s counseling rooms.

I’ve also been blessed to volunteer with a fantastic group of ladies this semester. We had a little Christmas get-together as well (Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take pictures during much of this Christmas excitement). We had a cookie/baked good exchange, played several new-to-me Christmas games, and enjoyed catching up with everyone. There are a bunch of ladies that volunteer, but each of us only works one day a week. That means it’s only during get-togethers like this one, or during meetings that we’re all together. I’m still getting to know everyone, and I’m the youngest one working there, but I really enjoy being around these ladies!

We have quite the Christmas adventure coming up, and I will hopefully have lots of pictures to share at the end of it!   

Our Thanksgiving Adventure (a little late)

So I know Thanksgiving was quite a while ago, but I've been meaning to blog about our trip since we got home and it just hasn't happened! To make up for it, I'll write two blogs because we've been having a lot of Christmas fun between Leslie's thesis, both of our work, and both of our final papers and tests! I officially finished with all of that yesterday, so I'm planning to take a few days to relax before even thinking about doing anything productive. Leslie still has to give some finals, do treatments for his baseball players, and take one final himself, BUT his thesis has been approved and he is set to start his research when we return from Christmas break. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Back to Thanksgiving! We made the 10 hour trip to Reform, AL on Sunday after church and arrived in time to eat dinner with Leslie's dad and brother at Jack's. Over the next days we were lucky enough to go to Tuscaloosa and spend time with friends who were still in town because of classes. We also got to eat at some of our favorite places!

We spent the week at Leslie's parents' house relaxing and hanging out with his family- and of course this little one, Belle. She's such a cutie, but very vicious as you can tell by the picture of her "wrestling" with Leslie.




 There are lots of kitties that hang out at the house which made me a very happy girl. They are so cute, but I couldn't convince Leslie to let me snatch one!

This one was relaxing on the car when it was time for us to leave...
She didn't even want to get off when we started driving!

We also got to go see the lodge that Leslie's dad works at one day. Leslie has obviously been there a lot, but I'd never gotten to see it before! I thought this guy was pretty cool, but I'm kinda glad he was stuffed!

 And Leslie and his dad had a friendly father-son game of pool in the new game room!

Back at the house, we cut up a tasty pineapple to snack on and learned a very cool trick! You can twist the top off of it!! Who knew? (Okay, so maybe a lot of people because it tells you right on the directions that come on the pineapple, but none of us knew!)

On Thanksgiving day we went to a get-together with Leslie's dad's side of the family for lunch. We had a great time hanging out with them and we stuffed ourselves sufficiently with some delicious food. We hung out there until it was time to stuff ourselves again at dinner with Leslie's mom's side of the family. It was a lot of fun, but I could kick myself for not taking A SINGLE PICTURE on Thanksgiving day! Thankfully, even though it was our first Thanksgiving as a married couple it was not our first Thanksgiving to get to spend together. However, I WILL be taking a lot of pictures on Christmas to make up for it!

And there will hopefully be several Christmas blogs to make up for my lack of blogging lately :)