Two days of video in a row?! Who am I even?
I know everyone has their own holiday traditions and, whether they are super simple or over-the-top extravagant, they are each so special. One of things I look forward to the most is Black Friday — and let me assure you it has exactly zero to do with shopping. Unless, of course, you count the tree!
We all slept in on Friday morning. Thanksgiving was exhausting and we all stayed up a little late. I was the first to get up and then both girls trailed down the stairs about thirty minutes apart. Finally, Josh was up around 8:30 and declared that we should be dressed and ready for breakfast by 9 o’clock. Nothing like good food to get the girls ready in a hurry. Of course, Sophie cried because she didn’t have any Christmas pajamas, Ella was frustrated over her own ensemble, I climbed into the pod to see if Ella had an old pair that Sophie could fit into (nope) and then Josh’s truck wouldn’t start. Welcome to the holidays! Fortunately, my parents didn’t have any plans for the morning, so we borrowed their truck and set off on our adventure.
We had to wait about forty-five minutes for breakfast and still ended up sitting at the bar. The kids loved the view and we managed not to knock anything off or send anyone falling off their barstool backwards. They navigated snapchat filters while we waited and Josh & I watched college football and yelled over their heads. Since it was a little later in the morning by the time we ordered, I opted for a turkey club sandwich and breakfast potatoes. YOU. GUYS. I might never order anything else again!
Once our bellies were full, we drove down the street to our very favorite site during the holidays. Can you tell how excited Ella was?! While we have a perfectly good tree farm in our sleepy little town, we’ve been buying our tree here for fifteen years and we’ve never been disappointed once. They have the best customer service and our tree is always beautiful, even six weeks later. Sophie did make a rather loud announcement about the cost of the tree, which garnered quite a few snickers. Apparently, she was under the impression that we could snag a tree for $17. She was very disappointed.
I somehow managed not to get in a single photo with the girls, but I was too busy stalking these three with the camera. They all look bored and irritated in this last photo, when in reality they were supervising the loading process. We made moon eyes over a few twelve footers and finally made our way to the car. These two couldn’t wait to decorate!
Because I’m always looking for new things to learn and because you probably don’t want to see the same five photographs every year, we filmed a little vlog while we were out and about. Enjoy!
Despite the fact that our lights went out exactly three times while I was stringing them (stupid fuses) and I was two strands shy of a full tree (I went to Dollar General in my pajamas), we had such a great afternoon getting started on our holiday decor. We watched Elf (twice) while I worked on the lights and, believe it or not, I actually enjoyed stringing them on the tree this year. I used four strands of large bulbs wrapped tight around the trunk for lots of light deep inside, and then used another ten strands of mini lights on the outer branches. My mama always said you had to have at least 100 lights for every foot of tree. It might take forever (and frustrate everyone but me), but it sure does look beautiful now.
You can see previous tree tent adventures here: 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2011 | 2009 | 2008. You can find the prettiest tree hunt of all times (2010), even though the experience itself wasn’t the most fun. Ella complained about missing out on the tent and our tree died long before Christmas and had to be replaced with a fake. It makes for a great story, but it’s the only year we didn’t get our tree from the tent and as long as it’s an option, we’ll never stray again!
