A Good, Old-Fashioned Christmas (Somewhat Literally)

One of the things we we're most excited this Christmas season was getting a real tree. After we got married, Cary Anne's aunt was nice enough to send us a hand-me-down artificial tree. But Cary Anne's family used to go out some years and chop down their own tree and my family always had a real tree, too, so we missed that. Towards the start of December, CA, Kelly, and I walked to our local garden center to find the right tree. After winding our way through dozens and dozens of pines, we finally found one that seemed tall and full enough and reasonably priced. The half a dozen block walk there didn't seem so bad, but for some reason felt longer when we were carrying the tree.
"I should have done more push-ups before attempting to carry this thing," I said.
"Then you would've just been sore," Cary Anne replied.
"No, I mean more push-ups in life. Not just today."
When we finally got the thing up to our 3rd-floor walk up, CA and I prepared the tree stand while Kelly removed sap from our clothes using peanut butter. Over the next couple of weeks, we decked the thing out in lights and ornaments and ribbons.

After the tree was up, the rest of the holiday season was exactly what you would expect. Our church Community Group had an ugly sweater party, where we spent the night eating lots of snacks and playing games. We also made a short weekend trip down to Lexington in the middle of December since we decided to spend the week of Christmas in Virginia with Cary Anne's family. It was a ridiculously short trip: 13 hours of driving for less than 40 hours of visiting. But we did at least get see family and friends. I even stopped back in at Krispy Kreme to say hello and get some free donuts.

The Friday before Christmas, we flew into DC to meet up with Cary Anne's parents, along her brother and his wife who had flown in a few days before. The next day, we all crowded into the van and headed down to Colonial Williamsburg.

Ever since I've known Cary Anne, she has talked about how much she loves Europe and desires to move away from America. But that attitude completely changes when it comes to Colonial Williamsburg. Whenever I would make fun of it, she would vehemently defend it like she was the daughter of Uncle Sam himself. Christmas in Williamsburg is a bit of a family tradition for CA's family, but they hadn't been since 2007, so CA was excited...maybe too excited.

We spent the week exploring the rustic, old buildings and meeting all of the character actors: the wig maker, the cobbler, the butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker. Cary Anne enjoyed learning about their sewing techniques, and I enjoyed watching the men fire off the cannons. During the day we would explore the old Govenor's hedge maze, and at night we'd all head back to the resort where we would eat dinner as a family and play games. The weather was pretty nice, too. It was so warm on Christmas day that Cary Anne and I went to play mini golf, which is an activity I never thought I take part in on Christmas day.

Overall, it was great trip and fun opportunity to bond more with CA's side of the family, but it's always nice to come home again.

From Chi to KY

A couple of weeks ago, Cary Anne and I had the chance to travel back to Lexington for a long weekend. Though we travelled to Kentucky back in May to spend Memorial Day with our friends Chris and Hannah, we hadn’t been back to Lexington specifically since Christmas, so I was excited…and CA seemed mildly amused.

I was determined to jam in as many visits as I could during our short time there, so on Friday afternoon we headed to my old high school to catch up with my old English teachers, Mr. Egan and Mrs. Wilkinson (though I guess now that I’m an adult, I can refer to them as their real people names- Gary and Tara). We told them all about our lives in Chicago, and they told us all about their continuing adventures in teaching and how Tara taught on a broken foot for half a day when she stepped off a curb wrong, but refused to admit it was actually broken. Apparently she gave her Creative Writing class the exercise of writing short stories explaining how she broke her foot, but soon realized that was a bad idea when half of the stories she got back began with, “Mrs. Wilkinson was so drunk…”

After that, we hopped over to see my old co-workers at Geno’s Formal Affair. It was great catching up with everyone. Since my departure, they’ve hired multiple new people, 2 of which are local beauty pageant winners, so Hunter made sure to inform me I’m not pretty enough to work there anymore anyway. We also caught up with Jordan, who we know from college and who has been the Assistant Manager at Geno’s for a couple of years. She and her husband, Tyler, are planning on moving to the Big Apple next year (unless we can soon convince her that Chicago is infinitely better) so Jordan can pursue a career in fashion, so we shared our knowledge of living in a tiny apartment in a big city. In fact, Jordan recently launched a new fashion blog and you can check it out here.

That night, we grabbed dinner at Waffle House with Sharonda and her boyfriend, Jay. Waffle House is a place of nostalgia for Sharonda and I since we spent many late nights there during the summers I was home from college, and Cary Anne and Jay like greasy breakfast enough to tolerate our insistence that we eat there. Neither Sharonda nor I are great “phone people,” so it was great to hear all about what they've been doing over the past several months.

On Saturday, we drove down to London, because our old college friend, Cam, was getting married. This was the highlight of the weekend because it allowed us to see so many of our old friends from University of the Cumberlands (most of whom we hadn’t seen in over a year). The ceremony was beautiful and simple, and was followed by a reception at a local country club. There were vases of water beads on every table, and many of us UC people sat in the back and tried not to make a scene as we took turns bouncing them and throwing them at each other. The older people around us kept staring and frowning; I don’t know why.

On Sunday, my whole family got together to celebrate my brother’s 29^th birthday. He was a bit predictable in his selection of a Mexican restaurant for dinner followed by frozen yogurt from Orange Leaf for dessert, but I’m not complaining.

Overall, it was a great weekend back in south.