Preparing for Christmas.....

As promised, here are some pictures as we prepare for Christmas - my favorite time of the year! We'll start with that always fun tradition of finding a Christmas tree. As much as I wanted to wander out into the middle of nowhere (National Lampoons Christmas Vacation style), with two young children, it's wasn't very plausible. So, we decided instead to go to Stibbitz Farm, right down the road. We were going to get a Frasier Fir this year, but decided instead to go with a basic Scotch Pine because we like the contrast of the dark green with the white lights that we use. The kids were really exicited to pick out a tree.

Although it was really snowy, the trees were SO PRETTY on the lot!

We had to leave the tree in the garage overnight to defrost, and when we brought it in, a mouse decided to come into the house with it!!

 Here is the tree before:

And after:

And all lit up:

The boys taking a break from decorating:

I'll get some pictures of the kids under the tree soon, but I haven't gotten to that yet. Last night the weather cleared up enough for us to venture out of the house. We decided to take the boys to see Santa Claus at the Lakes Mall. We're used to going to Rivertown Crossings, but since we moved, we had to go somewhere closer to home. At Rivertown, you can use your own camera to take pictures with Santa... at the Lakes Mall we actually had to PAY for the pictures! But, the boys had a blast, so it was worth it.

And then the boys were SO excited, we needed to let them run off some energy at the play area  :)

Today  the big plan is to make cookies. I have the Gingerbread dough in the fridge, so we'll start on those. Lots of different cookies will still need to be made, but at least we can start with those. The kids are busy playing on the snow hill Rick made in the backyard with the plow. Gramma Sunshine brought the boys some new sleds this morning, so they're breaking those in.