The Ussery Update

One of the many things I love about Christmas is the music. I L.O.V.E. Christmas music and John does too. I listen to it on the radio in the car going to and fro, on my computer at work and play lots of Christmas CDs at home and in the car throughout the holiday season. I even worked out to Christmas music this morning - it made it a little more enjoyable and tolerable (but still no fun at 5am). Nevertheless, Christmas songs bring me so much joy and cheer. We have several Christmas CDs and we took a few on our Thanksgiving road trip. It was fun to listen and sing along as we drove along the highway. Last year, I bought John Chris Tomlin's Christmas CD "Glory in the Highest". It is SO GOOD - we love it. All 12 songs are amazing. He sings a few classics and also songs written just for this album. We highly, highly recommend it! One of the songs on the CD is simply beautiful. It is written and sung by Audrey Assad who has such a peaceful and angelic voice. The s

We had a wonderful weekend! We got caught up on several things, had some time to rest and the house is now decorated inside and out for Christmas so we will be ready to enjoy it all once we return from our Thanksgiving trip. It's nice to have it all done and the house feels so fun and festive. We took lots of pictures so we hope to share those next week. We'll be taking a little blogging break as we leave tomorrow afternoon to go and spend Thanksgiving with my family. We'll be back home Saturday evening and will have Sunday to recover and regroup before going back to work next Monday. We are looking forward to a great Thanksgiving trip and time with family. After Thanksgiving, we look forward to enjoying the Christmas season! There are lots of fun and exciting things ahead. Christmas card preparations are underway, we've got a few gifts bought and can now begin wrapping presents to put under the tree (my favorite thing to do at Christmas), more shopping and order

These are actually a couple of pictures from last year, but we are excited in the Ussery home because we are decorating for Christmas this weekend. Hooray for the holidays! We do realize that we have yet to celebrate Thanksgiving, but we will be traveling this Thanksgiving (leaving next Tuesday afternoon) so we wanted to put up our lights on the house and get the inside decorated so it's all done and ready to enjoy once the Thanksgiving weekend is over. We are going to make a few snacks and do our decorating Friday night and Saturday. We also play Christmas CDs while we decorate so it makes it all the more fun. John is getting started on our outside lights and decorations tomorrow. He's really excited and loves to play "Clark Griswold" and work on "exterior illumination". The weather has felt very cool and crisp lately - perfect for this time of year. We will have a recap and pictures soon of "Christmas Decorating 2010". We are looking forwa

This morning when I woke up, I knew it was Veterans Day. I was aware of it, but that's about the extent of my thoughts early this morning. Then I tore off the page on our "page-a-day" calendar by the phone and it read, "Respectfully acknowledge the price courageous and liberty-loving men and women in uniform today and in the past have paid for our freedom, our opportunities, and our security." It gave me chills! We have family that have served in the military including my Grandpa, Armando's father, Kristin's father, John's Dad and John's brother as well as several other family members and friends. I even lost a dear childhood and church friend, Dan Amaya, who died while serving in Iraq. As I headed off to work, several people in the neighborhood were flying their flags. I leave early in the morning, so the streets are quiet. There was something about the peaceful neighborhood this morning and the site of "Old Glory" waving in the

Goodness, I have been bad blogger! I haven't blogged in a week. Where has the last week gone? Life has been busy and we've been out of town with another trip planned this weekend. November is upon us and 2010 is nearing it's end. It's time to post my "things to be happy about" from October. If you are new to this, I received a bright yellow, page-a-day desk calendar for Christmas last year and it sits on my desk at work. Each day the page lists various things to be happy about. Throughout the month I keep up with my favorite things the pages list and blog about them at the end of the month explaining why it makes me happy. I'm a person who tries to find happiness in the littlest of things and so many things excite me. I'm easily pleased. If you want to catch up, I started this in January so you can always look through my archive. Here are my October things to be happy about... Lattes ~ Yum! My favorite drink at Starbucks and visiting Starb