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!
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.
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)!
