{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} - The Hiatus is Over

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life!
Every Thursday over at Like Mother, Like Daughter

{Pretty}

There's nothing I love more than turning off the lights at night and seeing the beautiful glow of the Christmas tree from down the hall!  Even better? We dared to decorate the bottom half this year in confidence that the big kids were indeed big enough to handle it. We've made it two weeks thus far and the collateral damage has been minimal!

{Happy}

Since we couldn't plan a big anniversary date last month (thanks to the blessed arrival of our son!), hubby dearest came up with a fabulous future date idea: we both love Broadway shows, and we've always wanted to see Les Miserables, so we agreed to get tickets to the show when it came to Northeast in the spring. In fact,we promised. With a pinky swear. So my wonderful husband waited patiently for the tickets to become available, but to our dismay, no sooner did tickets sales open for the Boston show than they were sold out. So we resigned ourselves to the fact that it probably wouldn't happen. But miraculously he just happened across a local add for the show in Syracuse which is much closer (and which hadn't even been listed yet as a tour location on the main site!) and he was able to snag us tickets for some pretty amazing seats. Also, thanks to my wonderful brother's generous contribution to our "date," we got two tickets for the price of one. Les Mis, here we come!

{Funny}

Silver bells...with silver bows!
(Note the matching earrings!)

Our gracious hosts

This past weekend we had the pleasure of attending an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party. We had more fun that we probably should have shopping for delightfully tacky apparel, and I was ecstatic when I found not only a sweater that fit the bill, but a sweater vest. (I have to admit, though, that our hosts has us beat by a long shot with their getup)!

Someone partied hard...

Apparently the mixed media
look pains him

 Unfortunately I didn't seize the opportunity to take decent pictures of the kids' garb before they went into overtired/meltdown mode at the end of the night, but the few photos I did snap will give you a taste of how sweet they were!

{Real}

I've made it through almost an entire week at work since my maternity leave ended. That means almost an entire week away from not one, not two, but three little loves. And I've survived. It's still really hard to walk out that door every day, but 84 days from now I won't have to any more!