Saturday, November 24, 2012

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

It seems we now have a tradition of getting our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful warm and sunny day as we headed up the hill.  Will insisted on wearing his winter jacket, but it was quickly discarded as we hunted through the masses of possible perfect trees.
  


The kids were diligent in looking for just the right one.


Will kept getting distracted by all of the great sticks everywhere!  Do you like this one, mom? 


How about this one?


He was very excited when he found this really big one!


And Natalie was excited to wear her Santa hat!


 Amanda was happy to find some shade.  She was SO hot!


Will is studying some more sticks here.
 


As Natalie inspects a cat tail.


More sticks for Will, of course!


And, alas, more hunting for the perfect tree.


It must be behind this fence!  Darn!
 
Will had to be coaxed to put on the Santa hat.  But at some point during the day, he put it on and did not want to take it off!  Say cheese!


Here he inspects some cool nature stuff.


Finally, after much searching, we found the perfect tree.  Amanda and Natalie helped Daddy cut it down!  Use your muscles girls!


After all that hard work, we were happy to take a break and have a nice picnic lunch.
 
 


And then enjoyed our candy canes and rode the train, which was driven by Santa, of course!
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All that work made Mom and Dad very thirsty, so we were lucky to find a lovely winery just down the street.  The kids had great fun here too.
 


They especially loved the wild coyote.
 


And the big brown bear!  Roar!


There was even a cute little bear cub.


After we got home, the kids were thrilled to break out all of the Christmas decorations.


Including the reindeer antler and the cute elf hats.
 
 
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They especially loved opening up all of the fun ornaments.  The coolest ones, of course, were the ones they made, like this Christmas tree.


Natalie also played the trumpet.


There were many, many ornaments on the bottom branches after we were all done.  But Mom and Dad helped rearrange them.


We love this one!  Thank you, Carol and Jerry!
 


All done!  We are proud of our beautiful tree (and our new tie dye dresses and shirt that we also acquired on the trip)!
 
 
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Thursday, November 22, 2012

So Thankful!

Happy Thanksgiving! Mom and Dad are very thankful that we have great family and terrific friends.  We especially love our three little munchkins.  The munchkins appropriately showed their thanks with their lovely turkeys that nanny, Rachel, helped them make.

Amanda is thankful for nanny Rachel, toys, past nanny Sarah, Grandma and Grandpa, friend Ryan, necklaces, mommy and daddy, her house and Natalie, Amanda and Will.
 
 
Natalie is thankful for turkey, her teacher Catlyn, everyone in the whole wide world, mommy and daddy, toys, friends Ryan and Sara, her other friends, her house and nanny Rachel. 
 
Where is Will? 
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Will is thankful for his blocks, food, friend Ryan, his blankie named "ma", mom and dad, nanny Rachel, books, his teacher Dayna and his house.
 

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Shopping and Playing

Natalie, Amanda and Mommy took a quick trip to the mall recently. We did some power shopping and then stopped for some fun at the play place. They loved it, as you can tell from the big smiles!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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