Christmas Week 2010

Gammy and Popsy arrived on Thursday, Dec. 23rd, and we went straight from DIA to Paris' second riding lesson. It was so fun to share the watching experience with Gammy and Popsy. Paris was so pleased.
Mommy with her boys...Tommy LOVES his monkey shirt (a beloved hand-me-down) from Fletcher's kindergarten days in Ashburn. Tommy will get to wear it again next year, too.
Trying to get pictures with all five of them (cheerfully together) was nearly impossible!

Our HIL-arious tree...

Not to be mistaken for a scrawny leaning tower of Pisa...the tree seems to slump right more and more each day! It is definitely not sturdy by any stretch of the imagination!

Here are Tommy and Fletcher in their matching Reindeer sweatshirts from Gammy. Fletcher and I were privileged to meet Twilight, a real reindeer from Siberia who was a very rare white reindeer. Not albino, just white fur and even white fuzz on his beautiful antlers. So special. We weren't expecting to meet a reindeer on our quick rollerblading excursion!
Tommy in his super cutie, super warm doggie with antlers jammies from Gammy. He is holding his "fire dogs" (dalmation puppies) that Gammy gave him this year for the first Advent gift (the tradition she does for the kids each year).

Chopping down our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

The Friday after Thanksgiving we ventured into the Coloradian woods to chop down a Christmas tree with another couple who has done it for many years. All that is required is a ten dollar permit and you can choose any tree, any size you want. The kids had fun venturing into the woods to find the family tree. Needless to say, we found a great Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The girls chopped it down with a little handsaw and Sarah carried it back to the Chuckwagon. Our tree and our friends' tree both fit in the back of the van!

No trees in here, Mom and Dad!

The girls chopped our tree and Fletcher worked on our friends' tree. Fun, fun!

The thing with CO is they actually like you to remove the "extra" trees that grow wild and just serve as more kindling if a forest fire breaks out. You just drive anywhere within the designated area and get any tree you want for each $10 permit you've purchased. There is not an actual tree "farm" like Charlie and I did our very first year of marriage. The trees were in relatively straight lines and were fairly plump. We did choose the only UGLY tree that farm had...Charlie had his heart set on the "Charlie Brown tree" and we did choose the scrawniest one they'd grown. The worker actually chopped it down, though. We just pointed to it. We did end up loving that tree once we got all the ornaments on it...not so this year!! Our tree is hilarious looking! Don't think "love" is the word for how we feel about this year's tree...more like, "nag." It is so REEEdiculous looking!

Stylin' thanks to Grandma!

We've all known for some time now that Sarah is following in her Grandma's footsteps of being fashion forward. She LOVES cutie clothes and has found a favorite clothing store which many of her friends also prefer. Not surprisingly, she and Grandma had so much fun in there on one of her visits to CO! Grandma had that memory in mind, I'm sure, when shopping for Sarah's Christmas gifts at Justice. Paris also received her gifts from there, much to her delight! Parie definitely picked up on the fact that clothes from that store are COOL!

Advent Gifts from Gammy and Popsy=FUN tradition too!

The kids love the tradition of opening advent gifts from Gammy and Popsy instead of waiting until Christmas Day. This year they loved (!!!) the soft, little farm animals and sleep and play with them daily. "Baa-baa" (Fletcher's lamb) and "Snow" (Paris' lamb) meet up for morning playdates while Sarah's pony (Laughy Taffy) and Tommy's rooster (Cockadoodle) are never very far from either of their hands. The kids also love their drawing activities and wallets/purses. It was a very fun advent season!

One of our most treasured traditions started this year. We bought and started to read last year a book called Jotham's Journey. We were able to successfully complete the advent readings this December. We LOVED reading this book each day and couldn't wait to see what adventures Jotham got into or out of for that day. We often couldn't stop reading and spent at least a couple days in December reading a good chunk of the day away! SO fun for us to bond over this book! We ALL loved reading it out loud together! We got Bartholomew's Passage as a gift for ourselves for next year's advent season. Many families just rotate reading out loud one of the three books in this series each year during advent. We can't wait for next advent season to discover what adventures lie ahead for Bartholomew, a character we met in Jotham's Journey this year.