Christmas Pre-Recap

I did something I have never done in my life last night....I took down our Christmas Tree and started to de-Christmas our house on my own free will.  I tend to leave our tree up way longer than it needs to be up most years. Usually until Eric gets tired of walking around it and tells me I should have cleaned it up by now, but I got a wild hair yesterday afternoon while he was hunting and decided to take it down.  I was quite proud of myself until a little while later when I realized I missed having it up. I know it was going to have to come down eventually, but maybe I jumped the gun a little too soon. I still have our wreaths and sconces and Christmas cards up but no tree and no nutcrackers. I know I will be happy I did it next week when I'm not cleaning up pine needles for the umpteenth time, but for now I'm just going to have to settle for the pictures.  It really was a beautiful tree...

Perhaps the rush to take the tree down was just a continuation of our rushed holiday season this year. It has been so crazy with Eric's dad being sick, family in town, visiting family out of town, plus oh yeah-everything else we normally do, I feel like I've been running a race.  The past 2 days have been quite a slow down for us now that Christmas has come and gone.  I know things are going to pick back up sooner rather than later, but these few extra days we've had to sit back and relax have been wonderful, especially since both of us have developed cough that has become quite the royal pain in the you-know-what.  We took advantage of our free time and had date night to the movies to see Unbroken.  I highly recommend it!

Plus we got to use our re-fillable popcorn bucket and sat in the biggest movie theater I've ever been in!

Since neither of us has had to work we've had to find other ways to occupy ourselves. Eric has fished and hunted to his little heart's content, despite the rain we've had for 24 hours and counting. Aside from regretfully de-Christmasing our house, I have been playing with my Christmas present from Eric....

Oh yes, that would be my brand spankin new Canon Rebel T5 in my hands here.  So I guess this means I no longer have an excuse for less than stellar pics on here anymore right?  I am loving my new camera so far! I don't know that Eric thought it all the way through because he got tired of me snapping pics of him very quickly in the car yesterday afternoon.  I can only take so many pictures of the dogs and I have several of them already....but they sure are cute!

My mom got the stuffed pig in the above picture for Peanut for Christmas and he totes that silly thing around like a baby doll.  Amazingly he has yet to attempt to shred it, which might be a new record in this house.

I'll be back this week with a full Christmas recap which will probably take several posts.  Our Christmas week included a Christmas party, an Ugly Sweater 5K, Christmas in Memphis, Christmas in Alabama, and a BBQ Christmas Dinner that was delicious!