Trying To Get In The Holiday Spirit

It’s really hard to get in the holiday spirit when you live in Phoenix. No snow, warm weather and the Christmas lights are lacking the sparkle without the snow. It might also be because we have no tree and no decorations in our house. This is not because we are scrooges, but because we are gone for 10 days over Christmas and because of two girls, Madison and Izzy. I could just see spending time putting up decorations and then those two tearing them down when we look away. This lack of Christmas spirit has put a damper on the holidays just like it has the past five Christmas’. This weekend was the first time it felt even remotely the month of December with a possible Christmas holiday coming up.

On Saturday we had two holiday parties to attend. The first one was put on by a lady that I work with and let me tell you, she puts my mom’s Christmas decorations to shame. This woman had her house completely decked out in Christmas trees, snowmen, lights and even one of those villages. Her village was so big she said it took her 30 hours to put up. These decorations were in no way tacky, but instead really neat and festive. She also had s’mores set up outside around the fire and holiday music playing throughout the house. We only could stay for an hour because we then headed over to our other friends house for holiday fondue. This would be the second annual holiday fondue party that the Campbell’s hosted. It was a very good time because it was all of our closest friends eating fondue and having plenty of drinks together. The hostess is crazy because she is nine months pregnant and still put on her fondue party. She has been a trooper throughout her whole pregnancy, but this probably tops it again. I don’t know if I could have set up a party for my friend’s just days before I am going to pop out a baby. Baby Ella was also in attendance and she was completely adorable. I brought her a little gift to open and it was actually enjoyable to watch her open it. I am thinking I have been around her enough that she doesn’t scare the crap out of me as I am finding her to be super adorable and I even held her quite a bit. It wasn’t that bad either. Her favorite part about my present was the bow…of course. I told her mom just to buy her bows for Christmas because toys are not necessary.

We didn’t leave until after 1am and didn’t get home until 2am which means the dogs were alone for nine and a half hours. On the drive home I was just imagining what we were going to walk into when we got home. Of course we couldn’t come home to two dogs who behaved themselves all night long, but instead we walked into a disaster. Remember the dog bed they tore up last month when we went for a walk up the mountain without them, well now they tore up the replacement bed. We replaced the torn up bed with an older bed that we had stored away and now they tore it apart and had the stuffing everywhere all over the kitchen. We were too tired to deal with it so we let them out to go to the bathroom and then put them to bed. We, meaning Andy, cleaned up their mess in the morning.

Well, it’s starting to get chilly here and it’s making me scared for two weeks away when we will be back in Wisconsin for the holidays. I was pretty cold this weekend, and so was Andy, which means we are going to be complete wimps when we head back. Our bodies have completely acclimated to this Arizona weather so now when there is a high of 55 degrees it feels freezing to us. Going to freeze our butts off in less than two weeks!