#Reverb10, December 3rd

The Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

Beings that my word for the year was renewal, there are several moments that immediately come to mind for this. The first time I got a paycheck at the new job. The day Matt and I arrived up this way with a truckload of his stuff because he had finally made the move.

However, I think I'm going to go with this past Saturday, when, while watching football, Matt and I decorated the apartment for Christmas, rearranged the living room, ordered a new TV stand, made and ate a fantastic cheesy snack, and just overall had a really fantastic day. And a day is just a moment in time, right? Right. Let's go with that.

The day started with an early run to my parent's house while Matt slept in a little longer. I had made hummus for Thanksgiving dinner, and my college-freshman sister had forgotten to get her share of the leftovers. I told her I'd be more than happy to bring her some. My dad was making breakfast taquitos in honor of my cousin's British exchange student (it's his breakfast specialty, and she had never had one before, and the two of them had spent the night) so the whole house smelled of microwavable sausage links and hash browns. It made me hungry, I'm not going to lie - my grits with mixed berry jelly were feeling pretty inadequate!!

On the way home, I stopped by Wal-Mart and picked up a Christmas tree for us. Artificial, of course - I don't have the patience for a real tree, and this way we don't have to worry about taking it down before our holiday travels. When I got home, we set up the tree and began hanging my collection of ornaments - I've collected many over the years, primarily as a result of family members giving them as gifts. We realized we needed a tree topper, as well as some ornaments just for Matt, so we decided to hit the Christmas store in Old Town, and maybe grab a beer. We stopped into the Union Street Public House, because once I said they had good oysters that was the end of that discussion.  We each ordered a beer - seasonal wintry ales, because it was cold outside, and we ordered a dozen oysters. There is little better in this world than a nice, big oyster on a saltine cracker smeared with a little cocktail sauce mixed with just the right amount of horseradish. YUM. We downed that dozen in record time, and the only thing keeping us from another was the cost!

Upon finishing our beers, we headed to the Christmas shop. I found a tree topper right away - a light up star, perfect. We then went looking for ornaments for Matt, with focus on a guitar. We found one pretty quickly, as well as a box of small glass ornaments, a variety of colors and bell-like shapes to fill in some of the blanks on the tree. I was pretty excited about our finds, but that excitement was totally overshadowed by what I found when we got to the checkout line - 4 or 5 different pickle ornaments!!

(A little background here - Matt LOVES dill pickles. The big, whole ones we used to get at sporting events in high school in Texas, but that here come, in slightly smaller form, in a jar. Its become a running joke - he goes through one of those jars just about every week, and I always know when he's finished off a jar the night before because I can smell the pickle juice he's dumped into the sink, because its inevitably filled a glass or plate.)

I told him this was a done deal, but he could pick which pickle. He decided on this one: 

We headed home with our purchases to finish decorating our tree and hang some lights in our sunroom. The icicle lights we had bought for our balcony last year in Atlanta work perfectly along the top of our floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Then we settled into the Florida State - Florida football game, during which Matt baked the aforementioned cheesy snack. The cheese, called Fromager des Clarines, is similar to a Brie - a small wheel, enclosed in a white rind. Matt used this recipe that he found online to bake it, and man was it good. The cheese basically came out almost liquefied, and perfect for dipping bagel chips and apple slices.

The best part was coming across the garlic cloves - talk about a bite of goodness! Florida State won the football game, and, to top it all off, Maryland also won theirs, which means that Florida State is playing tomorrow in the ACC championship. In Matt-land, this is very very good news. Which means that, by default, its good news in Rebecca-land as well :)

In between some of this, we rearranged our living room a bit, put out our other Christmas decorations, ordered the new TV stand - all things that make it feel more and more like OUR home.  There's something refreshing about that, especially considering that a year ago we were really on some shaky ground.  When the day was over, we both felt as if we had just had the best day we had had in a long time.  There's something about that feeling that is reassuring.  I can't put my finger on it, but days like that really do make me feel the most alive - when I feel as though my life is moving forward and I can go to bed with a peaceful, happy, warm-fuzzy feeling inside. Last Saturday was that day, and I hope I won't soon forget it.