tree

Until I can successfully steal away my husbands phone for the evening and download all the pictures we have been taking for the last month, I will settle with posting a few pictures of decorating our freshly cut down, super yummy smelling Christmas tree.  

This year we had the opportunity to go to a real Christmas tree lot and cut down our very own lovely tree.  It was a particularly cold Saturday morning and started to snow just slightly as we were searching through the rows of trees. 

We showed up to clean our church house around 8:45am only to realize that the ward Brunch would probably just make it dirty again AND we didn't have any keys to get in.  We quickly altered our plans and bee-lined it straight over to the Christmas tree lot.   After walking and walking around the kids found our perfect tree.  Robby and Jesse took care of sawing it down and then Jesse and I carried it up to the front. The three children were rather cold and wet so we bought hot chocolates for all and quickly had our tree firmly attached to our roof.  We headed back to our house to change clothes and make it back for the tail end of our Christmas brunch party.  We spent the next few hours cleaning our church building, but managed to keep enough energy contained to come home and clean our own house and then put up/decorate the tree.  

It is always slightly chaotic trying to string the tree lights and manage three children bouncing off the walls with excitement at getting to hang ornaments.  Despite all of this I LOVE how excited they get to pull out our family ornaments.  Our tree may not look fancy like those trees you see in the Home Decorating magazines and is definitely not Pinterest worthy, but all the same I love looking at our ornaments we have had for years and remembering memories associated with many.  Some of my faves include:

*water-skiing Santa- I got this one the year we went to Hawaii with my parents 2007

*Tiffany head with pipe-cleaner body in a wreath- from gymnastics when I was at Starfires club 1994

*Suns mini ornament jersey- the year we purchased season tickets 2005

*boy on top of a mail carrier bag- I got this when we moved from Utah and was mailing TONS of letters to all of my friends back in Bountiful 1994

*Nurse Bear- I received this one from my parents the year I graduated with my RN 2004

*Bear with a ring- the year Jesse proposed to me and we were married 2003

And now that my children are all finally to the age that ornaments don't get pulled off constantly, we have a tree with a fairly equal proportion of ornaments spread throughout.  

 Eli, Maddie, and Robby

--loves these three, even if the pic is somewhat blurry

*For some reason, I cannot seem to take a decent picture of my Christmas tree.  Every time I try I get this funny blurry glare near the mid-section of the tree. Nevertheless here is our tree in all it's glory.  And if you can't tell, my children LOVE Christmas lights and they love to do a full room decoration-fest.