Greetings from North Carolina!

David and I have been in North Carolina for the last couple of days visiting my grandparents with my Mom and Dad. We drove the whole way and it took all day on Saturday. It's been a good trip that has included a fish fry, big breakfast, shopping, pizza, and church with Granny and Grandad. Tomorrow we fly home to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with David's family while my family remains in North Carolina until Saturday. We are so glad to be home and with family and look forward to the rest of this nice break! Tonight we are celebrating Christmas Eve in North Carolina and are opening all of our presents from my family! Fun fun times and more to come!

Winter Wonderland

Today marks the end of the Fall semester for both Rachel and I, which is reason to celebrate.  I can't believe how fast the year has flown by, but we are both very grateful for the restful Christmas break.  Finals were over last Friday for me, so I have had a very nice week.  We attended our Sunday School Christmas party on Saturday night, which was a lot of fun.  Rachel made homemade spinach dip and cherry pie.  Everyone at the party was raving about her items.  One girl asked her how she learned to cook so well, and another chimed in and said, "it's because she is from the South."  We loved that of course and just encouraged her to think that everyone in the south is a good cook.  

      Also on Saturday night, Ben came into town.  He stayed until Wednesday morning (due to the 2-3 inches of snow Tuesday night) and we had a blast with him here.  Unfortunately we did not take any pictures to post.  We went to the Federal Reserve Bank, the Truman Presidential Library and also went Christmas shopping.  We ate at the KC favorite, Stroud's, which is "home of the pan-fried chicken" as well as Oklahoma Joe's BBQ.  I had heard many great reviews about this restaurant, but the only drawback is that it is in a gas station.  It was really a unique place and great BBQ.  It was just great having Ben here.  

     Rachel has her Christmas party luncheon today at KCCS, and afterwards, we are going to start preparing to come home.  We cannot wait to be there as well as the other travels we will make.  We look forward to seeing everyone!

Our First Christmas Tree!

Well, Monday night David and I went to buy our very first tree together. We found the perfect one and it's a Scotch Pine. It's a little bit over six feet tall and perfectly symmetrical. We brought it into the living room and ended up having to rearrange all of our furniture! I was stressed about that at first but now I am really enjoying it. We got it standing straight in the stand and then David put the lights on. Tonight we put all of the ornaments that Mom and Dad have given me on. We are super excited about how good it looks and had a great time doing it together. Now we wish that people were coming to KC for Christmas so we could show it off! :) Work is going good this week and David is studying hard getting ready for finals next week. We truly cannot believe that we've already been married for 6 months!

David, holding our beautiful tree.

The tree in the corner, where the chair used to be!

The tree and new living room arrangement.