Decorating Our Tree

I love the magic of Christmas and all the excitement it brings along with it. The kids have been soooo excited about decorating the tree. After wrestling with the lights for a long time and trying to get the ribbons just right, it was finally time for them to set to work. They were so excited to get the ornaments out and start placing them where they wanted them. I love how most of our ornaments are ones that the kids made or have some meaning in our lives. We have ornaments for each of the kids first year, picture ornaments, homemade ornaments and ornaments from places we have lived and visited. Almost every one of them has a memory attached to it. The kids did a really good job putting them all over the bottom half of the tree. There are still clusters of ornaments on each branch, but just like last year, it doesn't bother me. I smile when I look at those branches, thinking of how each of them helped and felt so special doing so. I love that. By the end of the night, the tree looked beautiful and we had three very happy kiddos.

Hello Tree

We went back to the Co-op this year to get our Christmas tree. The kids were so excited to help pick the perfect one. The whole lot was full of pretty trees, but we knew which one was ours as soon as we saw it. :) I think it's almost 10 feet tall! We also picked up a couple of pretty wreaths to put on the house this year. Doug is in charge of getting the tree home and into the house. Once it's in the stand and not in danger of falling, the kids and I take over.

Portraits (Happy Christmas to Me!)

Doug gave me my Christmas present early this year: a 50mm F1.4 lense and it is amazing. I love the shots you can get with it. It is good for many different situations, but I tried it on some portrait shots of the kids and loved the results. Thank you Doug - I love you! For more shots of the kids, check out my Christmas Pictures 2010 album on Facebook. :) That last photo cracks me up. It just makes me think of the song 'You'd Better Watch Out, You'd Better Not Cry'... Love it!

Hello Buddy!

Rachel came home from school the other day telling me about how there was an elf that had visited her classroom. His name was Elmer and he sat on the cabinet in their classroom and didn't move all day. He was watching. He was watching the kids to make sure they were good and then at night he would go back to the North Pole and report to Santa. When we got home, she spent quite a long while searching our house for an elf. She didn't see him that day - it was the next day that she was surprised to see our elf sitting on the clock in our living room. It took half the day for her to notice him watching over us all... The kids decided that his name must be Buddy. Hello Buddy the Elf. :)

I pulled out a few boxes of Christmas decorations that day also... We had some fun with the Santa hats. Noah was at school, but hope to get a few shots with him in his hat as well soon!

Happy Birthday Doug!

Happy Birthday Doug! He turned 34 this year with 34 candles on his cake. We put the 're-lighting' kind of candles on there and it was so funny when he would blow them out and then they would light right back up! Rachel even had a try at it - to no avail. Although, with all those candles and the re-lights, there was plenty of smoke in there! I'm surprised it didn't set off the smoke alarm. We got to go out to dinner at Crown & Goose, one of our favorites, while Papa watched the kids for us. We enjoyed dinner, then did a bit of shopping at the mall before returning for cake with Papa and the kids. We hope you had a good day Doug! We love you!