Christmas

Matthew and I spent our first Christmas as husband and wife with Matthew's family. We had a great time. We spent Christmas day with Matthew's extended family and ate a lot of good food. Late Christmas night Matthew's sister, brother-in-law and niece came into town. Because they got in so late, we decided to open presents the morning of the 26th. It's been so long since I've been around a child at Christmas. Our niece is 7 years old and her excitement was contagious. It was fun to be around that again. Other than the excitement of opening gifts, we had a different type of excitement Christmas night. It was about 10pm and we were waiting for my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and niece to get in. At about 10pm, the doorbell rang and of course we thought it was them. Turns out, it was another neighbor. Matthew's mom answered the door and the neighbor said, "Did you know the house next door to you is on fire?" Yeah! On fire! So we spent our Christmas night with flames blazing next door. The fire department came out and they were there until 3am. It was so shocking. Thank goodness the house had been vacant since May, but it was still so sad and shocking. You see it all the time on movies and tv shows, but nothing compares to seeing a home burn down before your eyes. It's so sad because you know that it was someone's home and those memories are being burned to the ground. So needless to say it was a pretty eventful Christmas night. We snapped a few pictures of the house but also have some from our Christmas festivities.

Seeing the South

Matthew and I left Wednesday morning for our trek across the South to head to Pensacola. To mark our first blog post, I only thought it would be appropriate to document our travels here. As a result, I attempted to take a picture of every state line as we crossed them. Most of them didn't turn out so hot as my camera was dead and I had to use my cell phone, but at least I tried! We finally made it to Pensacola on Thursday afternoon after a stop over in Petal, MS, with Matthew's parents. We're looking forward to using this blog to keep you all updated on our lives. We hope you enjoy it!

This one is hard to see, but in the distance is the "Welcome to Texas" sign.

Louisiana (hard to see again....)

Mississippi River....We hit it at night





This is the best pic I got.....crossing into Alabama

On our way..........

So here's a little irony: that sign in the distance says "Welcome to Florida The Sunshine State" and it was raining as we arrived. Oh well, plenty of sunny days to come!