Time to celebrate!

Last week we were really starting to celebrate Christmas and enjoy all the wonderful blessings of the season. I am one of those people that gets overly excited about their birthday. I think even when I’m super old, I will still get excited about it. However for the past few years, I have had to over look my birthday because other things have been more important. Since we will be traveling again this year on my birthday, I decided that instead of overlooking my birthday I was just going to move my birthday to December 10th so that I could still celebrate it. A bit early, but I didn’t care. Phil planned an awesome birthday evening for me and before we left he surprised me with a gorgeous new dress. It was the perfect size and everything!

Isn’t is gorgeous!?

Friday night was Phil’s company Christmas party. I love the Christmas parties that his company throws; they are so much fun. I love getting all dressed up and going dancing with Phil. This year I was super excited to get dressed up in my new dress that Phil gave me for my birthday. Before the party we hosted a smaller, almost “pre-party” at our house for all the people that directly work for Phil. We had a wonderful time.

The ballroom at the Westin

On Saturday we had a smaller dinner party with some friends that we went to college with. We had them over for dinner (I got to use my new stockpot yippee!) and then took them to the Christmas pageant at our church. Aside from the almost-camel-disaster, the performance was awesome; superb musical talent! I loved the way they told the Christmas story. After the performance we came home for coffee and spicey cinnamon cake.

At church, before the pageant started.

All of the choirs.

When the Magi entered

Spicey cinnamon cake- with sugar on top;-)

Phil and I always have a mini Christmas with ourselves before going home for the holidays. It’s nice to celebrate it together, plus it’s less weight in our suitcases if we leave our gifts for each other in Houston. So Sunday we had our mini Christmas and swapped gifts; we made a complete mess of the wrapping paper under the Christmas tree. It was so much fun!

This picture illustrates how well we dove into the gifts :-)

In early November Phil and I got our photographs taken (thank you Hills!) and I have had the hardest time keeping it a secret. But since our Christmas cards are out now, I posted a couple of our favorites from our awesome photo shoot to the right side.

Well that’s about it for the Hawleys for a while. We are flying back to the coast to visit with family and friends. Over this break we will celebrate my real birthday, Christmas, our anniversary, and Phil’s birthday; we’ve got a lot of celebrating to do! So I’m signing off for a few weeks as we travel home, see you soon! Have a safe and blessed holiday!