It's Christmas!

Okay, well it's not. Not just yet anyway. Last weekend, Seth and I actually had a weekend of not doing very much! On Friday night, Seth and I had a lovely evening in which consisted of the film "The Adjustment Bureau", Ben and Jerry's and Ferrero Rocher. It was lovely because Seth works late quite a lot during the week and we don't really get to spend a lot of time together so we really enjoyed it.On Saturday, poor Seth was studying all day. Which meant, of course, that I just had to go shopping! It's not as selfish as it sounds though, it was Christmas shopping, so at least I was buying for other people! I / we've actually managed to do most of our shopping now, which is actually pretty early for us! We're both pretty last minute people when it comes to buying presents but we seem to be pretty good this year.

On Sunday afternoon, we put up the decorations! Always a fun occasion! I hadn't been feeling well and so Seth pretty much made me sit on the sofa while he did the decorating. That lasted for all of 10 minutes before I insisted on helping! We were quite pleased with our efforts. We, of course, had to listen to Christmas music as the decorations going up, it has to be done! My favourite ones which we may have listened to more than once were Il Divo's version of "O Holy Night" and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "The First Nowell". I absolutely love their arrangement of it, it is so beautiful. Laura and I went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' Christmas Devotional in December 2005 and they sung it then. It was just incredible. I can't describe how beautiful it was, hearing them singing it live and even listening to it on youtube, it gives me goosebumps. It brings back many happy memories of that Christmas with Laura. Laura and I are so close to our family and we thought it would be really hard having Christmas away from them. We missed them a lot, of course, but we had such a fun Christmas together that year. I also always love watching the Christmas Devotional every year, it really helps me to remember the real meaning of Christmas - even though the presents and spending time with family are wonderful, it's a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Here are the pictures of our lovely decorations. I know you're dying to see our handiwork!

Seth putting the bits of the tree together......

and adding the pretty fairy lights