Christmas Traditions and Things

I LOVE this time of year! I love the craziness of shopping, the smell of my tree, the decorations and of course the Starbucks Christmas cups. Chloe Ava loves the Starbucks cups too. Every time we pull up to a drive through she sits in her car seat saying, "Please still have them, Please still have them". I love it! Now usually we get our tree the day after Thanksgiving, after our morning of shopping. This year however we waited because we need our tree to last until after New Years. I will surely be blogging about this too I'm sure. Aaron's work doesn't have a traditional "Christmas Party" per say. They have whats called the Big Burnout the first week of January, where everyone brings up their trees and well you guessed it. Like a bunch of Banks folk that we are, we pile them up and lite those puppies! Its catered and cold, but a blast!

Anyways, this past Saturday we decided to go get our tree. I love Grand Fir trees because of their smell and look. Nobles are not bushy enough for me and Douglas Firs are...well they are like the White Trash of trees....sorry if this is your tree of choice....remember I was just talking about our classy Christmas party....so no judgment here!

Anyway! We saw a sign for Grand Firs $15 on this back country road and we decided to check it out. We pull up to this little shop and the man comes out and says we can chose anyone we want in this field for $15. They are trying to clear it out for plowing next year. The trees were like 6' and above! So I picked out one close to 9' and bushy. Thats my kind of tree! The guy then proceeds to cut it down with a chainsaw and put it into a trailer attached to a fourwheeler and take it up to our car. They then stick it on a shaker, where they proceed to shake it to get all the bugs out and then they bound it up and help Aaron get it on our car. It was completely full service for $15! Amazing! We then have to get home and search for our tree stand which is MIA, so we had to drive out to Banks and borrow one from Aaron's parent. At 8pm, we finally start to decorate as we are watching the news about the snow. We are all getting excited about it and I couldn't feel anymore fullfilled in my Christmas heart! So we put the kids to bed and I cuddle up on my couch with my fleece blanket and watch Its A Wonderful Life next to my illuminated Christmas tree. Really, does it get any better than that?

I know this is getting long, but I'm almost done! Stella woke up at 3am and 6:30am that morning to nurse and both times I ripped the curtains open to see if it was snowing. It was not! I was so angry at the weather man! So at 8:30 Payton came down and yelled, "Its snowing!". I looked out at the pitiful snowfall and wanted to cry. However, by 12:00 it was good enough to play in and that is just what my kids did! Stella didn't know what to think of the snow. But how precious are delicate snow flakes on baby eyelashes?? It was so sweet. Please enjoy my slide show below if you are still reading this!