living in excited and hopeful expectation!

it's been a good advent for us this year. not having full time school to provide the chaos of finals has allowed us to do all the things we want to do and really enjoy the season. our little united methodist church here has done advent up right. the husband has been happy because we've sung "People Look East" at the close of every service, which is a wonderful advent hymn and one of his all time favorite hymns ever!

last night we went with friends and co-workers to a walk through christmas lights display at a park. it was fun and the united way had sponsored a section with lasers and led lights that were set to music...fun for all, i tell you! the only weird part, for us, was that it was 25 degrees outside...and then a little windy on top of that.

another night recently we went with some friends to a drive through nativity put on by a nazarene church. it was well done with live animals and angels in earmuffs and everything. i commend those folks, though, because it was really cold that night, too...and we were having more wind gusts up to 50 miles an hour! we were a little worried the little angels standing on a platform above the shepherds might just fly away!

also, i've been telling folks who can't get up to visit that i'll post some pictures of christmas decorations. so, here are a few.

some of the red balls on our tree are actually tomatoes. i love them and i like having them on our tree because, if you've ever met the husband, you'll know he's a fresh tomato fiend! he plants at least three or four kinds each year.

these are part of the nativity my maternal grandmother painted. she gave me her nativity before she died, so i cherish it. we actually have 6 nativities up, i think. in one of them, the baby jesus has toes that show...i love it.

did i mention that there were 3 camels...live camels...at the nativity the other night? one of them was white, just like this one, actually. very cool animals!

these lights came from my grandma's attic when she moved earlier this year. they are from the days when my grandfather brought home lots of fun christmas decorations. (he died in '74, so they date from before then.) they're obviously not usable as actual lights anymore, but i tied them with ribbon and they are fun in our kitchen.

these, like the lights, are from my grandma's attic. i guess i'm just happy to be able to use and enjoy things that used to decorate my grandparents' and dad's house. (and the bowl they are in was handmade by a friend of the husband's family from oxford, ga.)

also, for those of you who remember the spinning wheel from my folks' house, we've got it now, and it's full of christmas cards. that's fun, too.

anyway, thanks for reading through that kind of random tour of our house.

um...also...a herd (is that what you'd call it? no, a flock, right?) of wild turkeys just wandered through the woods behind our house. seriously. like 30 of them. weird. they looked more like a herd of something.

so, um, now i'm totally thrown off and forgot however i was going to end this. so, enjoy the rest of advent! maybe i'll post something less self-indulgent later. but, thanks for looking at our christmas decorations that we love.