Hailey was here last weekend, which meant the kick-off of Christmas festivities for us! I had lots planned and we blasted off with the fantasy of lights on Saturday night. We brought our own music and blasted it! Ava helped daddy drive the car through the "fantasy" and Hailey hung out the passenger side window singing! Brad and I wondered if this was fun b/c of the lights, or because we were breaking the law with our children driving and hanging out windows? we debated next year skipping the event and just driving around in a parking lot with xmas music blaring and the kids hanging out the windows?! thoughts?! :)
(ps. click on any image to enlarge so you can see it better)
You can see I had fun playing with the light in my camera. pretty.
Sunday morning was a little rough. The girls were up until 10 the night before and Ava didn't fall asleep until 10:30 b/c she was convinced there was a bug in her room!
She was tired, but we went to see Santa anyway (and waited 45 min. to do it). Mama was losing a little patience by the time it was our turn. But we held it all together and it was worth it :)
The look on Ava's face is quintessential worry before meeting the big man in red!
He was so nice & gentle. Acted like he knew who we were!
he eased Ava into the idea by showing her his jingle bells, though she was still skeptical.
So, daddy helped out!
Then they took a family photo. (that elf isn't part of our family in case you were wondering! Though I wish she was. I could use one :)!
Next up: pick out a tree! We wanted to chop down our own, but it was getting too close to nap and a trip to the mountains was pushing it, so to pepper tree lot on Winchester we went!!
(left: the tree brad wanted to get. right: the trees that cost $180!!!)
Ava was pulling Hailey along, SO excited!
I told Brad to stand in front of this tree so that we could tell people this is the one we got!
(it would never fit on our house!)
I told the man I wanted a tree that didn't cost $180, but smelled amazing! He showed us the most beautiful tree and it only cost $50!!! SCORE!
on our car and we headed home :)
The rest of the story is just classic. We get the tree off the car (and it's heavy by the way), needles falling off as we push it through the door, and the trunk doesn't fit in the stand we have. OK. so we bring the tree back outside, needles everywhere again, girls running around getting the needles stuck to the bottom of their feet. Brad leaves. goes to get a new stand. $40 later we have a new stand. Get the tree in the stand! I begin putting the lights on and find that all the strands I have are half out. I go get new lights. $50 later I have 3 boxes of new lights and the 1st box I open: half the strand is out!!!!!!! OK! Brad goes back to Walgreen's and returns the lights and buys 5 more packages! That was just enough to fill the tree. Meanwhile Ava is taking ALL the ornaments out of the boxes and throwing them on the floor. OMG!
At this point I have to bring Hailey home, which is probably the break we all needed, though she was so bummed that she couldn't help decorate the tree :(
when I got home everyone was still feeling a little funktified, so I decorated the tree myself, while Ava played & took all the ornaments I put on off. wonderful.
All I have to say is that when you look in someones window and see the beautiful tree they have magically glowing...well, I never knew about the blood, sweat and tears that went into getting that massive thing up! And now I do. The next morning when Ava came downstairs she was in awe though. She said "wow! that's a pretty tree!" And then it was ALL worth it! :)
the best part of all this is when I shared this story with friends and family, they ALL laughed and shared similar stories, even worse for that matter. And I felt normal.
