Amazing how quickly time skips by, it's almost Christmas! I'll rewind a few weeks to pick up where I left off . . . shortly before Thanksgiving, Buck and I debated about what our best Christmas tree pursuit might be given his heightened holiday work schedule. In the end, we opted to head out to a local tree farm and search the greenery for our own special indoor plant :) The kids (and the puppy) had a marvelous time racing through the rows of fragrant firs! What an enormously fun game of hide-and-seek!
The sun was setting, and we still hadn't picked a winner. In a few ways, we like to be "off the beaten pathers" so we headed over to a section no one seemed to be browsing. Oh the soft and beautiful trees! The longer needles made the branches less sturdy for ornament hanging, but it was the kind of tree ANYONE would want to hug :) Graysen, wearing an army hat (you know, because he's four :), stood next to several recent plants declaring, "Not this one mom, it's tooooo small."
Apparently, his words sunk into our subconscious because after the hot chocolate, after the fun of watching the tree get shaken, wrapped, and loaded, we took our tree home . . . it barely fit in the garage atop the van roof! Oh dear . . .
We'll have to return to the saga of the Christmas tree a bit later, as we packed and planned and prepped for our Thanksgiving drive to see family and celebrate Christmas, we threw in our annual decorating of turkey cookies. If you are a parent, you've seen the look in these children's eyes before . . . not exactly tired, but not exactly right . . .
Within hours, the boys and I were throwing up. Caelan came out of her room a couple of hours later and joined us, the Buck came home from work to help, and Gabby joined in, ugh. We spent the day together, watched the Macy parade, but didn't eat nary a morsel of food on all of turkey-day. Oh what a holiday to remember :)
Feeling a bit better the next day, Buck--who mentally willed himself to not get sick--brought the tree in from the garage. As the twine was cut, it poofed out bigger and bigger and bigger, until it reached nearly to the ceiling and covered half of the girls' bedroom door! I giggled everytime I looked at it for the next two days :) The kids took turns with the decorating. I discovered an effective method last year . . . lay out all the ornaments on the floor. While the other three decide which two they want to put on next, the one who's turn it is puts his or her ornaments on the tree, then switch! It goes so much more smoothly than all of them man-handling the ornaments and elbowing for position :) 
To our surpise, other than one glass bulb eating incident, the dog has pretty much left the tree alone. I slowly started adding presents below it, to see if they would offer any temptation, but he seems to have learned his lesson.
And as this is the season of celebration, the kids were more than happy to throw a festive first birthday party for the little guy we watch during the week. The girls made cookies with Buck, the boys helped hang up "balloons" (the air-filled packing pillows from some of the gifts I'd ordered :), and they altogether added streamers and colored pictures. It's fun to see them working hard to bless someone else (even if it is a little someone else who will never remember :)
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