It takes a village...

If you know my husband, you know that he loves to decorate for Christmas... inside the house and out. One of his hobbies over the years has been to collect pieces of a collection called "St Nicholas Square". I only saw some of while we were engaged last Christmas. Being our first Christmas married and living the same home, I have now been able to watch the tedious process he goes through to create the ultimate Christmas village. 

To help him pull it off, he has all the structures cataloged and listed on a spreadsheet. There are approximately 60 structures ranging from churches, to coffee shops to a tavern and Grandma's house. There are also 100 or more extras like people, cars, lamp posts, trees and even a tiny Christmas tree lot. I just stood by and let him work while I took pictures... for 3 days. 

It all began with the red boxes taking over our home...

Kitchen

Upstairs hallway

Guest bathroom

Guest bedroom

Brad wondering why I am following him around taking pictures

Then he had to unpack all of them....

The kitchen became a staging area.

Then began the set-up process... except Samson heard something outside and it had to be checked out first!

Okay... all is safe, let the village set up begin!

As with everything new in our house, it must first be inspected by Zoe.

Now time to accessorize...

 Final product with the lights off...

Yes- that is Santa and reindeer flying above the village...

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Christmas in the Becker house!! And we definitely didn't have shortage of 4-legged creatures to inspect and observe the decorating. 

As soon as the tree box came out, Gyspy and Zoe were on the case...

Gyspy soon moved on, but Zoe had to make sure EVERY SINGLE piece was handled properly by Brad and that the box was thoroughly inspected.

Then the ornaments had to be checked...

Then Gypsy checked the assembled tree...

Cheyenne wasn't all that impressed... until she realized that Brad was just at the right height for some lovin'... 

Then it was back to being unimpressed...

As was Samson and eventually Gypsy...

Zoe kept at it though... there were other things to check out - inside and out.

Here is our beautiful tree and mantel. Plus our new nativity scene!

Which, of course, Zoe had to check out...

"Hey camel. What's your story?"

"What's with all the people?"

 We are still far from done, but it sure is feeling like Christmas!

More Cowboys...

Sorry for the delay between blogs - things have been a little crazy!

So, when we left off, we had turned in at Kathleen's after a fun night out at the Ft Worth Stockyards. We got up the next morning and enjoyed a yummy breakfast at a local diner. 

Then we said our goodbyes and headed to the home of the OTHER Cowboys in D/FW... the Dallas Cowboys! This past summer, Brad was the Best Man in his friend Ricky's wedding. Ricky's thank you gift for Brad was a pair of tickets to a game. Brad the Redskins fan, was happy to take his Cowboys fan wife with him! 

You can't miss the massive place on the horizon...

A sad remind of the game lost just days before...

It was the weekend of Veteran's Day, so they had all sorts of fun things going on outside of the stadium. We enjoyed checking out everything and climbing around the HUGE Army equipment. 

We had a great time at the game. There was the usual Cowboys fanfare and they did a great half-time tribute to the military. 

National Anthem

Kick-off

JR Ewing was there!! They introduced him several times... not once did the announcer use his real name of Larry Hagman - it was funny.

 

Half-time - the military band played and they had a small representation of each branch of the military.

Sadly, there seems to be a huge chunk of pictures missing from our camera. So, I can't share the rest of them with you... but the Cowboys won and we had a great time!!! Thanks for the tickets Ricky!