The Much Anticipated Christmas Post From Mike

Mike here - Emily has assigned this post to me. I think that she thinks that I need something to do in my time off from school! I'll do my best to please.

It's Christmas in the Smith household at the moment. Before we proceed, you probably need to know that Emily and I have something of a tradition of having issues at Christmas. You see, she places great value on decorating, while I do not. You can see the conflict of interest. This conflict became sorely apparent during our first Christmas together. I, being the non-decorator that I am, neglected to actually get around to doing any decorating, so Christmas came and our house looked like it was stuck in July - no tree, no lights, and no love for the negligent husband. I ended up redeeming myself by buying and setting up a 6 ft. fake tree from Walmart that just happened to be on clearance (we were well on our way to New Years by this time) and buying and wrapping a special present so that Emily and I could celebrate Christmas late. I ended up getting by, but only by the skin on my teeth! Since then, I have done better about actually getting into the Christmas spirit, but it is sometimes still a struggle.


With all of that said, I am proud to announce that Christmas decorations went up in the Smith household beginning on December 6th and were finished a few days later. Many thanks to Ron Hogue (Emily's dad), who bought us a new Christmas tree that is about a million times better than our old one, not least because it comes together in three easy steps as opposed to the five hundred or so that our old tree required. I actually enjoyed spending the twenty minutes that it took to put it together this year. Ron, you may have saved Christmas for many years to come! Here are a few photos of this year's decor.



And since this is the first Christmas blog, I figured that it might be a good thing to take a few pictures of Bella. She demanded to be dressed in a Christmas outfit that is a little big on her - okay, maybe I just decided to dress her up in this outfit for the cuteness factor. She never disappoints on that front! I tried to take a few natural light pictures. We'll see how they turn out. Patti (Emily's mom) is supposed to teach us how to take these pictures without the blur. Until then, though, here's what we came up with!



And last but not least, here are a few pictures of my girls. They have nothing to do with Christmas, but I feel like showing them off. And yes, my wife is hot! And my baby is cute!



Until next time, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

This blog was sponsored by Allison Hogue (Emily's sister), who graciously allowed me to borrow her laptop while mine is in the shop.