What a difference a day (and a year) makes!

Before I go any further, I can't believe that I forgot to mention our one year Massiversary! This past Saturday, December first, marked the one year anniversary of the kids and I waking up in our new house for the first time. It's been an amazing year, and we feel really lucky to call this beautiful place home. At some point, I will do another walk-through video of the house, just so you can see everything we've done in the past year!

But a single day can make a huge difference, too! Last time I posted, on Saturday night, it was soooooooo cold! It had been snowing all day and was in the low twenties (but felt even colder). So it was very odd to wake up the next morning and see that the outside temperature was already at 39 degrees! We made it to 50 degrees yesterday! All the snow on the ground? Gone. And today, at 8:42am, the temperature is already in the mid-forties. It feels like spring, only without the hints of greenery poking through. So weird! I think we will be playing outside today and taking advantage of this!

Yesterday, though, I was so thankful for the suddenly "warm" weather. We went back to the Festival of Trees, and the kids got to enjoy all the other activities. We rode on a horse-drawn carriage down Main Street, took a spin on an antique fire truck, and did some holiday crafts. The kids had a great opportunity to see Santa... but they wouldn't, as expected. Note to self, though: That event is the best place to see Santa, if we can ever convince them to do it! The setup they have is impressive, the lines are short, and the official photo is only $3! Much better than the mall!

Anyway, here are a few pics from the carriage ride. I took this one as the carriage was pulling up. Our ride!

And this was the view as we rode down Main Street. You should have seen the line of cars behind us, haha!

We ran into quite a few friends while we were there, including my buddy Miranda, who went on the carriage with us. She snapped a family photo for us-- a rare thing these days!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, made all the more enjoyable by the non-freezing weather! Now that I know what the festival is all about, I plan to drag the kids to even more of the events next year. It's so cool!

Later on, we went to get more Christmas decorations for the outside of the house. I actually haven't seen them in the daylight yet, so I might need to go out and take a picture later! We got wreaths to hang on all the front windows of the house-- I bet it looks awesome! In the meantime, here's a picture from the front room last night. Between the toasty-warm pellet stove and the Christmas tree, this is my happy place! ahhhh...