It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

This morning we had the first "frost" on the ground and it was chilly...the news said 25 degrees. No real word of snow yet, though...





Our "Portland" Christmas is slipping away quickly, and we're trying to pack it all in—Christmas music 24 hours a day, and a basically fully-decorated house.













We have probably our favorite tree yet this year, and we were a bit afraid it was going to be too big for our ceilings, but it fits perfectly. We're pretty obsessed.





our lights are somewhat less than we'd like them to be, but we're learning. who knew putting up lights was so difficult? i think we'll do it better next year. and i'm gonna get a wreath for that front door soon. maybe today.





We're trying to start a tradition of going to some Portland Christmasy traditional thing every year (you may remember that we went to see a christmas carol last year)

And last night we went to a "Portland Christmas Tradition" .... the Singing Christmas Tree. Mostly a Christmas song performance, with a bit of drama, some silliness and a fair amount of cheesiness, the draw of the Singing Christmas Tree is that the main choir is in the shape of a tree...



unfortunately, we were in the cheap seats and couldn't see the top of the tree...it was actually really good, we definitely enjoyed ourselves.

but we didn't get as good of a picture of ourselves as we did last year...



eh. you take what you can get, right?

and in the last bit of christmas news, we put some jingle bells on nickel's leg and i wish there was a video to accompany. we may have traumatized her, but it was hilarious...she was limping and straight-legged and so confused.



so with that dog cruelty, merry christmas! 20 days....

daniel preaching!

the sunday before thanksgiving, daniel preached for the first time.

it was amazing. i was pretty nervous for him, but he prepared a ton and really felt good about what he was supposed to say and the direction of his message, and then he got up on stage and did amazing. seriously, flawless. i am so, so, so, so proud of him, it's unreal. of course, if he bombed it, i still would have been so proud of him, but the good thing is he didn't :)

it's here for you to listen to!

go to it directly here
or through the website here, where you can download it if needed...right now it's the second one from the top, called "Are You Asking the Wrong Questions"

and our church couldn't include the video that was shown for copyright reasons, but i don't see why i can't link to it here, so when daniel gets to the part where he's talking about a video, you can pause it and watch it here.

Christmas album of the year!!

It's Christmas Time!!!!! YAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!

We just found our favorite new Christmas album of 2009 so we thought we'd share!

It's Chris Tomlin Glory in the Highest and it is fantastic!! Really. It's worth the 8 buck or whatever on itunes for sure. We will have pics and videos of our newly festive house soon. Stay tuned!

P.S. 2008's winner for best new Christmas album went to James Taylor At Christmas. Also very much worth whatever they are charging.