Christmas Cheer

I have had a really hard time getting in the Christmas spirit this year. I put my Christmas tree up the weekend before Thanksgiving and I still have not finished decorating it. I just don't feel like doing it. I thought that being pregnant would make me feel extra festive this year. Not so much. Unfortunately, I still spend all day fighting off a variety of unpleasant symptoms as well as just feeling crappy and exhausted overall. Whoever said, "oh you'll feel so great once you get to your second trimester!", lied. I'm still waiting for my pregnancy "glow" to set in. Until then, I am going to focus what little energy I do have on Christmas and the fact that we get to find out the gender of our baby in two weeks!!! I feel like once I find out the gender of the baby, I will be much more in the mood to nest and start doing the fun pregnancy things.

Last week was full of fun activities to get the Christmas season started!

On Monday night, my mom's church hosted a ladies dessert to celebrate the beginning of Advent. My mom, sister-in-law and I attended the event with our cousins and Miss Flo, the mother of one of my mom's best friends. It was a great way to kick off the true reason for the Christmas season. 

One of the girls in my small group and I were put in charge of decorating our entire church for Christmas. For two days, Ella and I worked hard putting up decorations. My main job was decorating the two Christmas trees on the stage. First, I had to build the two trees and fluff them. Then, it took me 8 hours to decorate them. I am very OCD about my decorating and I have to make everything perfect which is probably why it took so long. Plus, I had to make the two trees match which was pretty difficult. Each tree has 100 Christmas ornaments in addition to the life-savers that I also turned into ornaments. Each life-ring represents one person who someone in our church helped come to faith in Christ this year. Between the two trees, there are 185 life-rings in all. In total, I had to hang almost 200 ornaments on each tree. And you know I couldn't just hang them anywhere, I had to strategically place each ornament. No wonder I've been neglecting my own tree at home. Ella and I had a blast decorating the church and I am so proud of the work we did. I loved attending service yesterday and seeing everyone worshiping in the midst of our festive decor.

My mom and I attended the opening night of the local Nutcracker in downtown Jacksonville. There are a few different productions of The Nutcracker around Jacksonville, but the First Coast Nutcracker is the best one in my opinion. I danced in this production year after year when I was younger and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra performs all the music live during the performances which makes it a great all-around experience. Even though it's pretty much always the same (yes I still remember all the choreography), going to see The Nutcracker every year is one of my favorite holiday traditions.
 

Another favorite holiday tradition of mine is the Festival of Lights 5k race. My mom and I started walking in this race a few years ago simply because the route takes you through the beautiful neighborhood of San Marco and we loved looking at all the Christmas lights along the route. Last year, Jared's sister started doing the race with us and now Jared's mom joined us as well this year. It has sort of turned into a "girls' night" Christmas tradition for our family. Jared comes too, but he actually runs the race so we just do our own separate thing. I love this race because it is at night and the entire route is lined with luminaries. The people who live in the neighborhood decorate their houses and sing Christmas carols for us as we pass by. Tons of walkers dress up or decorate their strollers and pets, and it just makes for a fun overall event. This year, the walk happened to be on the same night as the ACC Championship game, so of course we had to sport our FSU face tattoos at the race and support our Seminoles!