pure exhaustion

These past couple of weeks have been very exhausting. For me? I guess, but mainly I'm talking about Lyle. He has been working so so SO hard. He stays up to the wee hours of the morning, takes a 5 hour sleep (if he's lucky), then gets up at least an hour or two before I do to do more studying before he goes to class. We got news of his first A (congratulations lyle!), but he is still determined to keep working as hard as he possibly can. This week he had another final on Wednesday and the photo below was not the night before it (but two nights before it). He is taking tonight (Wed) off for a breather and then he is hitting the books double time beginning Thursday in preparation for his exams next week...the FINAL week! Sadly we have to wait until Friday before it's over. Well, here's to 9 days before Christmas #2!

I figured I would show some of my christmas decor (the little that would fit and not make the apartment look overcrowded--ok, so it looks that way anyway). Here is one of our Christmas trees (debuting it's second year in a row). I was reading Domino (the mag) and saw this as an idea, of course with real gifts at the bottom of the tree if you didn't have the space. Well guess what? This NOT-creative genius thought that idea up last year, so I felt a little proud. However, to be able to put the gifts under the tree means you have a large bare space on the wall which does NOT happen if you live in a tight space (trust me), so their advice isn't logical for the "cramped space". It does however work almost anywhere else! Here is our other tree. If you can see it, it's the tiny thing on the credenza next to the santa in a car figurine Lyle bought me for Christmas last year. I have actually changed a few things, so I'll post our holiday decor a little later with the most important decoration--my nativity set (which Lyle also bought me for Christmas last year). It is one of my most prized possessions and I find myself looking at it quite often. It's very beautiful and very classic. I just hope one day a toddler or my slippery hands doesn't drop one and shatter. It is, however, inevitable right? I will enjoy it while I can.