Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all our loved ones!

It's a bittersweet time of year for us. We are so excited for our upcoming trip to the Smoky Mountains where we'll be spending 5 days in a cozy cabin, but at the same time, it will be both mine and Jason's first Christmas away from our families. I feel like I'm on a bit of a rollarcoaster, I'm super excited one minute that I have all this time coming up with Jason and then I get really sad that I'll be missing our families back home.

I hope that with even the distance, everyone will still have a wonderful Christmas together and make many new memories. If possible, we would love to see pictures of how everyone's Christmas was spent and then I'll even post them on the blog for all to share.

Our shopping is finally done. The families gifts have been mailed, most of the presents wrapped and the Christmas cards mailed. Other than some baking and packing for our trip, we're about ready for Christmas. There's even a chance of snow, which would be so very cool. I'm really excited about the gifts we've mailed to our family, they are going to love them!

I also have some other news, that most of you may have heard by now. But, no harm in mentioning it on the blog as well. I've sent out some emails requesting that people be praying for God's favor on Jason's music. While at work one evening, Billy Currington and his girlfriend came back into Morton's Restaurant. And Billy walked right up to Jason and told him how much he loved the song he gave him, Right Where We Belong. It was a huge compliment! Can you imagine a celebrity seeking out a normal person and not the other way around? Crazy! His girlfriend even mentioned that they keep Jason's demo cd in their car and listen to his songs all the time, that she loves them. Well here's where we're asking everyone to pray - Billy is finalizing his song list for his new album that he starts recording in January. So we're really praying that he picks Jason's song for his new cd. So please everyone, keep us in your prayers!

Other news, our firm Adams and Reese had a Christmas party at Mortons Steakhouse. It was fun to see my hunny working our party, looking all cute in his black and whites. One of the attorneys, Gif Thornton, who was running the show and making annoucements, pointed out Jason told everyone that he was my husband! He then proceeded to inform all of us that "Jason and his team" would be serving us today. You know he got razzed for that one by his coworkers. I had one lady I work, ask him if she could pinch his butt. When he told me this, I laughed, cause she knew he was my husband and she was trying to give him a hard time. It was pretty funny and don't worry, no pinchage took place. I was so proud of him, he was such a professional and looked so cute at the same time. We ended up having so much fun, that a bunch of us stuck around in the bar till almost 8pm that night - and that's with the Christmas party starting at 1pm! I have to say, I think it was the best company Christmas party I've been to. Oh, this picture is of myself, Brooke and Melissa. Our offices (or cubes I guess) are all next to eachother - and we love keeping our corner of the offices a fun place to be. We have a great time with some of the best attorneys in the offices right next to us.

I also met a new friend this week. There's this girl that started emailing me from Scotland, who was going to be moving out to Nashville and she wanted to make some friends before her move. So we've been emailing for the last 6 months or so and finally met for the first time last Monday night. I was nervous, but as you all know, I've done this before ;-) We met at Starbucks in West End and hit it off immediately. She's 27, recently married, 5 months pregnant and has a great accent. The next thing we knew, three and a half hours had flown by! I took her back to her home and met her husband Aaron. I'm looking foward to hanging out with her in the next few months, before she heads back to Scotland to have her baby. I've included a picture of my new friend from her MySpace, so you can see what her and her hubby look like.

We've also been to the movies quite a bit lately, so I have a few reviews for you. Our friends Nick and Melanie (I also stole their picture from Myspace) joined us to see Apacalypto - which I DO NOT recommend. Two thumbs way down. That movie was so incredibly violent! After 2 hours of sitting through a ton of violence, my stomach couldn't take it anymore and I went into the hallway and waited through the last 30 minutes on the phone with my dad. Then this last weekend, after church we went by ourselves to see The Nativity - two thumbs way up! We loved it - it was so good! This will be a movie we hope to buy and share with our kids every year at Christmas. It was done really well and wasn't corny at all, which I kinda expected a bit. If you haven't seen it yet, you should see it over the holidays! AND, last week, I went with my friend Brooke out to dinner and to go see The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet - loved it. It was such a good movie, very funny and heartwarming. I also recommend that one and will be adding it to my collection.

Tonight I'm baking a bunch of stuff as gifts for my attorneys. I'm making fudge, rice krispie treats, molasses cookies, peanut butter cup cookies and if I have time, Sugar Cookies. I know - I'm a maniac. Its a wild and crazy night in the Keith home ;-) You all have a wonderful Christmas and I will be back with pictures from our vacation next week!

Love you all & Merry Christmas!

Brrrrr.....20 degrees!

Believe it or not we had weather that literally went from 75 degrees one day down to 20 degrees the next. It was nuts! This was around the time that you all had snow back home. I mean if its going to get that cold here, it might as well snow! My parking garage is two blocks from where I work and it seems to get longer every day the temperature drops. I bundle up like you wouldn't believe. You know that scarf and gloves you gave me Sherry for Christmas? I wouldn't DARE leave home without them! I kid you not that when I walk down the street the wind blows right through my pants and I have to look down to make sure I'm not dreaming and didn't forget to get dressed that day. My next investment will be in leggings to wear under my clothes.

Well I found some pictures that I had taken from when Jason and I had gone out househunting one weekend. It was a gorgeous fall day and we fell in love with some of the houses in East Nashville. So I've added some of the different ones here for you all to see what exactly we're hoping for in terms of buying next year. As small as some of these homes are, because of the nice location and how well they've been restored, they are more expensive than your typical homes outside of Nashville, which is where you find some of the better deals. I would say these homes start in the 300K-400K range.

I also added a couple pictures of the East Nashville Fire Station that Jason was trying to show his parents while they were in town. I guess they couldn't locate it, but we found it by accident and I snapped a couple pics. It's very old and beautiful.

This is a bed and breakfast also in East Nashville. Its smack in the middle of where all these other beautiful homes are that I've shown you. Aren't they great?

Other news, today we're throwing a baby shower for a friend of mine at work. Her name is Leslie and she had a beautiful baby girl Copeland when she was only 5 months along! If you all remember, my cousins were born pretty tiny too, so I remember how small these premie babies can get. Copeland was born at 2 lbs 2 oz. Smaller than even my cousins Kathrine and Kolleen. She's gained a few more ounces and I finally got a picture of her total cuteness to add to the blog - in this picture she's 2 lbs 6 ounces, but isn't she beautiful? She's now 4 weeks old. I honestly have no idea how someone can look at baby like this, that would normally still be in the womb and call it a fetus or tissue. God is amazing isn't He? Leslie is also doing really well - she is the sweetest lady and we've all been praying for her here at the office. I'm looking forward to seeing how blessed she will be when she sees how much everyone gave - a ton of attorneys and staff gave close to a $1,000 in gifts.

We've decided on a home church for sure now. On Sunday Jason and I attended the 101 class for Harpeth Community Church and there wasn't one thing that raised a red flag. Everyone was really nice and I learned quite a lot about who they are and what they believe. Our senior pastor Dr. Bobby Harrington is actually from Calgary, Alberta and received his Bachelor's degree in Theology and his Masters in Christian Counseling from Harding University and then also a Master of Divinity Degree from Regent College, the University of Calgary, Princeton Theological Seminary and Asbury Seminary. That's quite a list! And even as well learned as he is, he sticks to the Bible in everything. We love his teaching style. It's weird to think that we'll be going through the Identification process in front of everyone - I remember seeing other people do that, but I haven't done that since I was in elementary school back at Northgate. Eventually, as we get settled into the church, I would like to get involved with the youth program. The church has about 450 members and close to 60 youth. They also have bands for the high school and juinor high, so they can be trained for the worship teams. I loved it when Pastor Stone did that for CCK. While we were at the church service, I also ran into my friend Kacie from work. It was so fun to see someone I knew there. Then through her and her boyfriend Dan, they introduced us to some of their friends and we all ended up having lunch together. In between the church service in the morning, lunch with Kacie & Dan and the 101 class in the afternoon, Jason and I squeezed in a movie and saw Deck The Halls - which we laughed our butt off. It was seriously so funny and we were expecting it to be quite corny.

In the world of reading, I recently finished Summer Breeze by Catherine Anderson, which I loved and will be reading more of her stuff in the future.

I'm currently reading The Most Important Year in a Man's Life/Woman's Life, which is a Christian book on the first year of marriage. It's aimed at showing newlyweds how to cultivate good habits in preparartion for the challenges in the future. I'm really enjoying it - half of it is written for women and the other half for men - so of course, I'm always flipping it over to read Jasons side after reading mine :-) Jason is also reading this at the same time.

AND finally I'm also reading Seasons by Bonnie Hopkins which is also been great and I've been enjoying quite a bit. But I'm trying to hurry so I can read Dear John, the latest novel of Nicholas Sparks'!

How's everyone doing on Christmas shopping?? I'm almost done! Yeah! Which is good, cause I have to mail a lot of mine over to Seattle and that's going to take close to 6 days for shipping, unless we want to pay an arm and a leg.

And before I wrap all this up, I have to give huge props to Jay & Tina for celebrating their SEVENTH Anniversary last Sunday! Congratulations you guys!! I love you two so much and I am so proud of you both. You never settle for mediocre in your marriage and you continually push for more of God. We hope to see you both soon!

I had to add this one last picture. Your probably wondering why I'm attaching a picture of our bed. Well if you look closely or click on the picture to zoom in, that little black speck next to the button is Bank's tail peeking out from inside the duvet cover. She crawled inside the duvet cover and I almost didn't see her, I thought it was just a lump in our bedspread. After she heard the click of the camera she poked just her head out - I so wish I could have taken a picture of that in time. Its her new thing of playing hide and go seek. It was pretty stinkin funny - she has quite the personality.

That's all I have for now. I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season and we miss and love you all. 19 days till Christmas!!