Although we don’t go “shopping” the day after Thanksgiving, we do travel into town. I laughed this morning as we started out to pick up our Christmas tree… we were side by side with cars who had come from the city to buy trees at a bona fide Christmas tree farm. We were leaving the country for the city to buy a tree that someone already cut down! Oh well. We buy our tree at the Lloyd’s lot every year, they have the most beautiful fir trees I’ve ever seen. We get an 8 footer and a live wreath for our front door.
Today, Ella fell asleep in the car and wasn’t nearly as excited about being there as I had hoped. One of us had to be holding her at all times, so the photo ops were limited. The picture above is me & El picking out our wreath. Below is a sleepy-head picture with daddy while looking for the perfect tree. We followed our tree-cutting with a tasty meal of mexican food and then came home to trim the tree and decorate a few more rooms.
Josh dreads the tree every year because I make him put the lights on. I’m one of those decorators who wants at least 100 lights for every foot of tree we buy… that’s 800 lights! Unfortunately, we had a casualty right before the lighting, so we are down by a hundred. Even so, the tree looks beautiful and Josh did a great job. I’ve even conceded… he is a better tree lighter than I am! Since he does the hard work of getting the tree in the house, straight & level and adds the lights, we let him sit out on the ornament hanging. Ella attempted to help me this year, but as you can see below she “can’t do it!!” This is my current favorite picture.
Well, until you get to this one… it is REALLY my favorite. This is the excited face after the lights were on and the wrapped presents were tucked underneath. She was napping while I wrapped the presents, but got up just in time to help me do bows and name tags. She was astounded that 90% of the gifts had her name on them. I was telling her who the gifts were to and she asked if she had to share them. I assured her that on Christmas you don’t have to share (I hope you don’t think I’m horrible) and boy was she happy. Then I was reading the names on the gifts and said, “to Ella, from Mommy & Daddy” and she started screaming, “don’t put you name on it, I don’t have to share!” Precious beyond words.
Are you jealous that I’m almost finished with my shopping? I have to buy for Josh and a few others, but I’m only a few gifts away from being finished.
Here is the beauty all finished up. It is much prettier in the low-light, but my flash doesn’t show that very well. Again… I need photo lessons from Kamin. I did a little more decorating today, which I’ll blog about later in the week and I put the first coat of white paint on my kitchen. It’s looking cuter by the minute (considering it is my least favorite room in the house!).
