A Night Of Holiday Celebration

My, this weekend has been busy! I'm going to need a couple of days off of work just to recover from all of the holiday activity! Someone call work for me while I crawl into bed...

Truthfully, it hasn't been too bad. Busy, yes, but definitely not bad. On Friday, I started wrapping gifts. There are currently about 10 under the 3 foot tree, and more to go! And I'm a sneaky girl too--Cary likes to 'shake Christmas', so one of his gifts has a jingle bell on the gift. When he 'shook Christmas', all he could hear is the bell! And then his second gift, I put the jingle bell on the INSIDE--same effect! I need to think of things to do in this way every year!

Once Cary got off of work on Friday (yes he was one of the lonely ones...) we went to Southlake, where we found beautiful placemats from Crate & Barrel--I love that store! We then headed off to my parent's house, where we helped mom set up Christmas (dad was out of town for the weekend on business). Dad, Cary played around on the banjo to keep it warm for you!

On Saturday, Cary and I went to his parents' house to help them set up Christmas as well. I love setting up Christmas, so getting to help set it up with our parents as well as our own makes for great holiday spirit. Now, where is my Santa hat...

The point of this post though, is not to write about setting up Christmas (which we did ours this afternoon and I found my Santa hat!!!)

Last night, Cary and I went out to Ft. Worth to celebrate his graduation/our 1 year anniversary. I know, I know. He hasn't officially graduated yet. He has 2 class periods left, and a presentation to give on Tuesday night. AND our anniversary is not for another 15 days, but the event I planned was on this night.

My gift to him were tickets to the Ft. Worth Symphony Orchestra Holiday program. He had never been to a symphony before, and I didn't think anything would be better than to celebrate the early holidays, like it was done last year!

We started out the evening with dinner at Texas Land and Cattle. The meal, of course, was delicious as it always is when we are there.

After eating, we had an hour to get to Ft. Worth so we started our drive out there. But seriously, it only took 15 minutes from Euless! (maybe it doesn't surprise anyone but me though)

When we walked into the Bass Performance Hall, it was crowded, but so beautiful. We made our way around, looking at the tables that held a lot of angels and the Christmas trees. There was a girls choir that sang in the hall before the performance as we made our way up the stairs and to our seats. I chose the Mezzanine because it provided great priced seats and not to mention, I like that word ;o)

The seats were on the side, and our chairs were lined up one behind the other. We had an amazing view of the left side of the stage, but unfortunately the drums, piano, and trombones were out of our view.


The music had 2 sets which was 40 minutes long and a 20 minute intermission. The Music Conductor was Miguel Harth-Bedoya, with a choir, a bell choir, and a 15 year-old Soprano prodigy, Nicolas Gutierrez.

I was intrigued by the music the entire time, sometimes closing my eyes to just take in the sounds, sometimes watching Cary do the same. My favorite song? There were 2--Three Dances from The Nutcracker, Op. 71 (March, Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy, and Russian Dance), but I also liked Sleigh Ride. It was comparative to the song you hear on the radio: fast, refreshing, and fun.

The end of the performance was a sing along for the audience with snow falling and Santa Claus. What an amazing night!

Afterwards, we went to Barnes and Noble to keep warm and let the crowd die down going to their cars. You could see the square from the window, and there was a big Christmas tree there, along with some store fronts covered in Christmas lights.

This night was a beautiful time, and there is not a more enchanting way to get into the Christmas Spirit!