Christmas recap

So we haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving yet, so this was going to be a "holiday recap" and include thanksgiving, but see, some of the pictures are missing (between a camera, two iphones, and two users on the same computer, we oftentimes get confused...) so i'm just making it easy on myself so that you all get a post already, and constraining it just to christmas. but trust me, thanksgiving will be coming soon.

it probably goes without saying, but christmas was fantastic. hurried and crazy and all, but fantastic.

one of the first events was a "formal" dinner with a small group of high schoolers we have over every wednesday night for a bible study.

here they are, in picture one with daniel looking incredibly awkward and i love it:



and in picture two with myself



...interesting how braden (on the right) never stopped closing his mouth. weird.

but the main event for christmas before returning to georgia was the annual monroe family christmas.

for three years now, daniel and i have had our christmas day before we return home. even though it's not in georgia, it has still become one of our favorite things about christmas.



we treat it exactly like we would any christmas day. we creep downstairs in to find that santa has come, quickly fill each other's stockings, take pictures of nickel and ourselves in front of the tree and then start opening gifts!





...we're really ridiculous.



...and here we are in our christmas eve onesies. like i said. ridiculous.

we gave nickel a bone to open, just like we did last year, but honestly it's not worth showing. apparently she's getting old and boring, because she kind of tried to open it, then just looked up at us.



after we open gifts, we make an incredible breakfast, complete with mimosas and this year homemade mochas (thanks to a stove-top espresso maker that was a gift to me!)



we spend the rest of the day like most people spend christmas day, sitting around lazily playing with our gifts :) it's amazing. around 5 we dropped nickel off at the boarding place and then started packing!

being home was fabulous. we hadn't been to georgia in a year, and so it was crazy seeing all the ga license plates, hearing all the accents, and such...plus, of course, seeing SO MANY people. going to Daniel's childhood church is always wonderful, just spending time with our parents, being with extended family, and seeing a few precious friends. sadly, it's always a bit bittersweet because we know it's soon to come to an end, but regardless, we treasure that time SO MUCH.

and this christmas we stole a day to go to athens, where we went to college and met and thus share SO MANY memories. best we can figure we hadn't been there in at least two years...

we had two meals there and if you know athens at all you know that that means we had a really hard time deciding where to eat.

there's last resort grill (yummmm),


farm (of course, ugh),


5 star day,

clocked,


and doc cheys,


just to name a few. but honestly, those last two don't even make the list. even though they're SO GOOD.

we ended up lunching at the grit







a smelt. gosh.

had cheese dip at mexicalli (best white cheese dip in the world...the one on the west side is closed!!!!),





and ate dinner at taco stand (can you tell the last two were daniel's choices. and the first one—the vegetarian hippie restaurant—was mine?)







and we spent the day walking around downtown, shopping and seeing north campus and the new student center (huge and amazing).

















(the burned georgia theatre :( and the 40 watt...)

and we took a picture in front of the building where we first met :)



and that night we were some of the few people at the georgia basketball game. one of daniel's favorite things ever.






and my favorite thing about athens christmas— the lights in the trees



(although, portland does this, too :) )

the only pictures we took of actual Christmas were at grandmother monroes—where, probably because of all the small children, cameras and videocameras are the norm.







but even though we only have pictures from that "event," all of christmas was so amazing, and while we missed our house and were glad to be coming home, it's always so hard to leave.

we flew all day on the 29th, leaving that morning, two layovers both with delays, and getting into portland at 12:30 at night. but we came into a snowy portland! apparently, snow completely surprised everyone, including the weathermen who didn't see it coming at all. about 3-4 inches, and it was beautiful! unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of our house in it's first snow :(

and we took a video of nickel coming home just like we did last year, expecting great entertainment, but like i said earlier, she's getting old and boring, and barely noticed us when we came to pick her up. once she got home, she just passed out, exhausted. i suppose she had a good christmas, too.

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.

Wildhorse weekend

We got to take some high schoolers to Wildhorse Canyon, a Young Life camp in Eastern Oregon for a student discipleship weekend last month.



Even when its a camp I've never been to, there is something about going to a Young Life camp that feels like coming home. It's a place that I know I can trust. I can trust the message that students will here. I can trust the people working there to stop at nothing to make sure that everything is just right for kids to hear about and experience God.

And Wildhorse didn't disappoint. It is vast...to say the least. Here is the view of camp from the beast of a mountain that we climbed.



So even after losing feeling in my extremities after zip-lining into a lake, in Oregon, in late October I still had a great weekend. If you are reading this and we did Young life together at some point Kirsten and I miss you like crazy. So quit dragging your feet and freaking move to Oregon already so we can do ministry together again. We have a bedroom waiting for you (see previous video post).

The Great Pumpkin...

Ok, so here's the deal. we aren't terrible bloggers. We swear. We just can't find the cord that connects our camera to the computer. Lame, we know, but that's why we can't blog. So I was going to do a post about our pumpkin carving, which was so much fun in our new house! We carved a pumpkin that Dave and Sherry Grey grew!! A home grown pumpkin! How awesome is that!? And we were really pleased with the results! It is probably the silliest looking pumpkin face in the history of the world...but in an awesome way!

So hopefully we will get those pictures up soon, but until then I thought I'd share a picture of Matt and Kim's pumpkin. Because, I don't know if you know this or not, but they are pretty awesome at this (I think they learned it in one of their 52 combined years of schooling). We are talking NO STENCILS or anything here... Be in awe!



Show-offs...

Here it is!!!

Ok, so I missed my deadline. I am a few hours late, but I have good excuses. We lost our video camera until last night and it turns out that videos take FOREVER to upload to Blogger...So it's not my fault! Anyway...Here it is! Our new house!!!!! Enjoy the tour!
















Well there it is! We can't even begin to tell you how much we love it and how overwhelmed we are on a daily basis that it's ours. Thanks for following along with us during the process. It felt pretty slow at times, but looking back it really feels like last week that we were picking out lots and showing you our hole in the ground. Pretty amazing.

So we promise that our blog will move on! No more birthdays, no more house posts...but fear not. We will keep posting (more frequently we promise). We love that we can share a little of our lives with you this way! So keep reading!

Hopefully we will see you soon! (When you come visit!!!!!)

Ok...

so we here at the monroe doctrine realize that things have kinda gotten out of hand. we have heard your unvoiced grumbles (and your voiced ones amanda) and are responding with a resounding..."wait just a little bit longer"

we are all moved and and LOVE the new house (understatement of the century) but before we give you all the grand tour we wanted to do most of our unpacking, so we can show you what it really looks like, not just the same empty rooms you are used to seeing only now filled with cardboard boxes.

So we are now ready to officially say that within 48 hours the online virtual tour will be ready!!! So keep reading! Don't give up on us yet.

And then...we will be able to post about other things! (and there was much rejoicing...)