Christmas Tree Shopping

We drove out past the sea of goody goody gumdrops, through the candy cane forest till we found the Perfect tree!  Which to you might seem like the most non-perfect tree.  Beware of judging my friend!  For I will show you the potential of the so called ugly tree.

 We did our traditional voyage with our Awesome neighbors and a friend from Anchorage, we've done this together now for 3 years I believe.

 We knew once we saw this tree that it would grace our living room for a season!
Let me remind you not to judge!  You shall see how great this tree can be!

 Notice the dog? hehe

 And they slept... the WHOLE time!



B4 Christmas...

R took me on a date to see our first 3D movie, by the way Avatar is alright only if you see it in 3D, but I wouldnt pay money to see it again. Dont know what all the hype was about!

We picked up this bum on the side of the street on our way to a Christmas party, he had some strange attachment to Cindy, wierd... Oh wait, that looks like Landon our lil brother, oh yup, my mistake. How could I have mistaken HIM for a bum, he looks legit, right?

This gift exchange was for $25. gift cards instead of gifts. We got the best ones: REI and Visa!
Wow, this is pretty much our only Christmas pic together

Busy FUN Weekend

First off we got dumped on and this is how much, it seemed like 3 feet in one night

I got 6 package slips in the mail in one day, how amazing is that... so I went to the P.O. at 5pm expecting to stand in line for over an hour to find only 2 people in line, took 5 min. Apparently they asked everyone to stay home that day because of weather and all the snow, I didnt know... but roads were fine! Talk about luck, and that same day I got 2 FedEx packages also!
Christmas Ward Party! We wrote the 5 missionaries from our ward. These are my friends who got married this spring, they're fun.
JD had a party Sat. night and Dan disappeared with his chainsaw for about an hour and came walking out of the woods with this for JD.

He's really good at this stuff! He did this one in the dark and quickly!

Sunday we went to the parents house for dinner and afterwards we lazed around a bit, and I thought it was funny to look up as we're all talking and see this... Ken & Cindy bought eachother laptops for Christmas!

And today us girls made carmeled pretzels!

...with chocolate!

Then Lico from upstairs was bored and came over to help, he took over the whole kitchen and finished up for us, the funny thing was that he loved every bit of it!

Nativity LOVE!!!

So after we had the Nativity Display last week in our chapel (if you're not familiar its where people all around town donate their nativities for the weekend and the entire building is decorated, there's a red room, white room, international room, this year they added a patriotic room and it was amazing, but there's thousands of nativities and they're so beautiful), anyways I didnt have to go to classes as all the rooms were closed off except the chapel, so I figured I'd go help and it was actually really cool. Two years ago we (Mom, Valli, and I) saw this amazing nativity and have coveted it ever since. Its the 2004 edition from some Home catalog and sold out so fast and is no where to be found. Well, after giving up looking for it I found it on eBay, and guess what?? It was a buy it now for $25.00 I snatched it up so fast and I just got it 2 days ago. So here I am showing it off to you!

I also bought this Pewter Nativity!
And this wood Nativity from Jerusalem

Next year I'll be able to actually donate some to the Nativity Display and I'm really excited about it, I've always wanted to support it. I've had nativities on my Christmas list for years now and decided I know what I want so I'll just buy them, and I did!

... more Christmas Decor

For years now I've sat at mom's house on Christmas to watch all the girls around me open gifts from my mom to find these beautiful quilts, and every year I beg to have one and promise I'll be more proud of it than any of them... and last year my wish finally came true. Look at this amazing Christmas quilt. I have hung it up and put it on display this season! I trully LOVE it! Thanks MOM!!!

I bought this sleigh at Salvation Army for a $1.00 it had some mural on it that I didnt care for so I painted chalk paint on it and turned it into a countdown. Its fun!!!
And I got this at JoAnn's last year after Christmas for a few dollars also. Love after Christmas sales!

Santa Claus is in the house...

Neighbors had an appearance from the big man himself and I captured a few pics... because Santa asked!

Christmas Decor and my AWESOME tree

So I must tell the story of the tree.

When we went tree hunting we only had about an hour. We drove around a bit with some friends, one of them found a worthy tree after trekking through the woods a little ways and being short on time I looked over to this joke of a tree and I said "We should take that tree... it would be unique." as it was super skinny and scrawny compared to all the other trees.

Then Joel said "Cut it down quick before she changes her mind!" So that's how we got the tree.

When it came time to decorate it I decided it would be easier to wrap the trunk in lights as there arent many branches, then layering what branches I had left, and since there's no room for ornaments I went with ribbon this year, but I couldnt decided if I wanted to hang it from the top or if I should wrap the tree, so I did both really crappily to see which I'd like best, and when I did I saw that the crappy ribbon job totally went with the theme of the tree so I left it, spool and all.

We then had Joel put the star on top as he's the tallest, the springs dont make it very easy for it to stand up so the star is drooping to the floor and even though at first I thought we should fix it cuz I didnt want bad juju, but then it grew on me. This is the least amount of effort we've ever put into a tree and I have to say its my very favorite because it makes me laugh every time I look at it. Dont you just love it? It kind of reminds me of the grinch for some reason.

I went and bought a bunch of candy bars to decorate the gifts



Here's my home-made M&M bowl

And here's the advent calendar I made last year

Monthly Update...

Black Friday 4:45 AM

Target

These are the people behind us in line, all the way to the light.

Found this nasty sludge in Joel's rear differential
Got the awesomest Charlie Brown tree

After dragging it out we had even less branches

The Christmas Tree Crew

And I attended an 'Ugly Sweater Party'... I bought an ugly sweater at Bishop's Attic that I was going to alter and pin this baby sweater onto, but after altering it, it fell apart so I barely got this toddler one over my head, pinned it to my shirt and called it good! Had lots of fun playing 'I never' and the game where you tell 2 truths and 1 lie about yourself, playing with a bunch of A.P.D. officers made it no fun... they were really good at picking out the lie.

Grandma's Tradition

Every year on Thanksgiving it's tradition to open a present from our Grandma W. this gift will contain one Hallmark ornament, and we actually have a lot of fun seeing what we got each year.

Only problem is that sometimes when we go through the Christmas stuff each year we cant remember who's is who's and we fight over the one we think is ours. So this year I decided to take pics of everyone and their ornament. Valli I'm pretty much posting this for you since you didnt get the best descriptions over the phone. Here they are... wait till you see Spencer's, its hilarious!

It's a Mrs. Moose! LOL! Do you think Grandma gave him the right one? Or was she thinking hmmm, he'll really enjoy this???