I love Christmas. I love Christmas. I love Chritsmas...

I have to keep reminding myself that I DO LOVE Christmas. I was so excited when Thanksgiving was over. We immediately got our Christmas tree (it has to be real-love the smell) and decorated our house. Oh I loved it. And now 9 DAYS away from Christmas I am not sure why. For some reason I decided to make 15 presents by hand this year. What was I thinking....well I was not thinking at all. There are 3 different projects, pajama pants (even though I am not an experienced sewer), Snowman crayons ( I had to peel 168 covers off), and my favorite and by far the most attractive 2 family trees (super cool, I will have to take a picture and post it) and when I decided to make them I did not think "O maybe not a good idea since you are making so much already". NOPE. So here I am again 9 days away from Christmas and I have done nothing for the pajama pants except buy the flannel, and have not attempted to melt any crayons, the family trees I am actually almost done with but they were the easiest. And then the CHRISTMAS CARDS. Every year I HATE them and every year I do them. In a effort to look cute I got us all coordinating outfits. We got all done up and for 1 1/2 hours we took pictures (Brian has turned into the Nazi photographer...but that is for another time). None of which actually turned out well. The picture we are sending has to be in black and white because the color looks funny. So you cannot tell we have coordinating outfits on. And Brian and I are the only ones who look decent. And out of the 4 of us Ben and Austin are by far the cutest part of the family. So below are some of the pictures that will not be on the Christmas card because they would not fit. See the are pretty CUTE! But you won't be able to tell that from our card...o-well. So it is here and now that I have decided to stop stressing. So what if the cards are going out late? So what if I accidentally put the return address label where the stamp goes on all of the envelopes? So what if the family letter does not have anything to say about me because all I did this year was try to survive? Well I did and I am HAPPY it is Christmas time. REALLY.

Christmas Tree 2008 Part 4

Once I finished cutting through the tree trunk. I discovered something very disturbing about my dream tree. See below:

Right next to this "perfect tree" that I thought I had found had grown an unseen smaller Chistmas tree whose pine needles and branches made up about 40% of the green, fullness on one side of my perfect tree.

Of course, from the side where I started cutting the trunk I could not tell that there was another smaller trunk next to my "perfect" tree.

Once the cut tree was moved to the side, I was astonished and astounded at the same time to see that 40% of my tree was not there.

Good for us that where were were planning on placing the tree in our home, you can only see the good side of the tree ;-)

Christmas Tree 2008 Part 3

After Austin lost interest in cutting down the tree he decided to eat some dirt.

Christmas Tree 2008 Part 2

So once we found the tree, the boys and I started to cut it down.

Christmas Tree 2008

So this year we decided we'd go to a Christmas Tree farm and cut down our own tree with the boys. Good idea right? Right - sort of...

So we get to the tree farm and spend an hour or so looking over the various patches of douglas fir and noble fir trees.

We finally find a tree that has the right amount of fullness, but no too full (so that there is open spaces for the ornaments to hang). The right height, 7ft. - check. A good green color - check. We liked it so much we posed for an impromptu family picture. We were so proud of finding the perfect tree. See picture below: