The Christmas Tree Farm and Light Park

Every year, Tim and I get a real Christmas tree. It's something he and I have always agreed on this time of year, even though I never had a real tree growing up. I just love the way they smell and the way they look. Last year we really wanted to go to a tree farm and pick out a tree, but we waited too long to do so and we "missed the boat" so to speak. We both thought it would be a neat experience - especially for Kennedy. Since we missed out last year - this was our year. We started looking last weekend and there were more tree farms here locally than we realized. We chose the closest place (Christmas Memories Tree Farm) and I emailed the owner last week to ensure we were prepared for this first time outing. Turns out all we needed was ourselves - they provide the rest! Now....it would figure that the first open weekend in the season for this particular tree farm, and the date we specifically set aside for this venture - there was about 2-3 inches of accumulated snow before we even left the house and it was still coming down. Ha!

Time for the snow bibs:

All bundled up and ready to go!

We were the first tree-pickers to arrive and the family who owned the tree farm greeted us merrily, despite the frigid temperatures. They told us to just wander around amidst the trees and take our pick - each tree was tagged at the top with a price and they had all different kinds of trees to choose from. Kennedy had other things in mind - who cares about picking trees when you can "make tracks" in all this TOTALLY AWESOME SNOW!

After a lot of hollering at Kennedy "come back...what do you think of this tree, stop trying to grab the snow because your gloves are going to get wet, stay where we can see you, etc. etc. etc" and even more trapsing around in the snow amidst tons of wonderful trees - we finally found this beauty to make our own:

Next up - this nice guy cut the tree down for us and although I was trying to get Kennedy and her Daddy in the photo while we prepared to load up our first hand picked Christmas tree - they were plotting......something different than posing for a picture.

To take Mommy and her blasted camera out once and for all! Nice! Too bad she aimed a tad low....and totally missed me all together. Hee hee hee. 1 for Mommy and 0 for team Daddy.

To the car....er....Griswald mobile.

Oh yeah..what's worse than driving in a bunch of ice and snow surrounded by driverrs who appear to have never driven in it before?I'll tell you - driving in a bunch of ice and snow surrounded by drivers who to appear to have never driven in it before WITH a tree tied down to the top of your car.

Family photo with our tree. We madeit home safely I'm happy to report. 

I did take a picture of the finished product but not until today. It didn't occur to me until after we arrived home that it would be hours after this lovely trip that we could actually decorate the tree. It had to dry out first. In the meantime we got out all of our other decorations and amidst them found some of my favorite toys. I've only listened to the song you are about to hear 7,396,243 times since I recorded this video YESTERDAY (Lord, help me and Mom - thanks so much for giving this to Kennedy last year!). She is clearly enjoying it as much now as ever.:

*Tim would like for me to clarify that those stellar dance moves:  She got em' from her Momma.

Since it was such a perfect winter weekend, we decided to go see the Southern Lights display at our local horse park with the Banks family. After the drive through the lights you can enter the facilities for some holiday festivities. We didn't do the whole Santa thing but we did meet Frosty the Snowman. Look how pleased Kennedy and Matthew were with meeting him. Ha!

Baby Tyler - always the happy one. I swear this child has perma-grin. Hopefully my next child does too! He stayed all bundled up in his stroller and didn't make a peep. Sweet boy.

In one of the buildings they had a model train exhibit and the kids loved it. Heck - their parents loved it too. It was really neat. These two are like peas and carrots - they love each other.

It was a really fun filled Christmas preparatory day. Picking a tree was all that we thought it would be and the kids had so much fun last night. They even ended their evening with a little ride on a toy train. Unfortunately I was on the train with them so I didn't get a picture of that.

Here is a picture of Kennedy in front of our decorated tree. I am glad it is up and we can enjoy it for a while. This tree should last longer than ones we've had in the past since we bought it fresh (at least that's what the owner of the tree farm told us). I'll let you know if it does or not. Sadly, a cheesy grin is all I could get out of this munchkin after church today. She's full of herself - clearly!