christmastime is here!

i love this time of year. it's just about the only time i wish for a few snowflakes. after that... spring please! actually i'd love it if we could have three months of beautiful fall and then one month of winter. of course, living in michigan it's usually the other way around. and then it ends up turning into 4 or 5 months of snowy cold. but that's not the point. i love decorating my house for christmas. i love the smell of my christmas tree. i love the charlie brown specials on abc. i love baking... it's the only time of year i bake, so i have to enjoy it.

so sunday after church we went out to get our christmas trees. it was supposed to be around 45 degrees.... i think it was for about 5 mintues. the sun was out when we got out of church, so i thought it was going to be fabulous. i was freezing. we still had fun though. it was funny to watch connor and ava run through the trees 'hiding'. ava would just stick her face in random trees and say she was hiding. connor would just wander aimlessly. they were running down the path and ava kept saying, 'hold my hand, connor.' to which he replied in his deepest manly voice, "NO!" to which i replied, "connor, you're being rude." so finally he started saying, "no thank you, ava. i do it by myself." they were loving picking out trees and scaring grampa.

this year we went with the scotch pine. it's the best tree we've had in a while. i really love it. i finished decorating it monday night, and now our house is all christmasy. connor loves looking at all the decorations this year. not surprisingly, we have tons of sports ornaments. connor points them all out to me... daily... several times a day. the first day it was up i went to take a shower and came out to find about 12 ornaments on the floor and couch. we had a little talk about looking and not touching. now he tells me what they all are and says, "decorations are pretty. only look. don't touch!" it might be easier if they weren't volleyballs and soccer balls and golf balls and santa playing golf. they look like toys to me too!

i'm going to have to get some pics of our tree all decorated later. oh, and the house too! nathan put up lights for me this year. our first christmas in this house we still had the awning, so it was easy for me to put lights on that. last year, the awning was down and nathan was traveling. i was too chicken to get on the ladder to put the lights up so our house was lonely and unlit. but this year my hero borrowed mike's ladder and put up icicle lights across the front. it looks so warm and cozy. the lights dangle right in front of connor's window and every night he wants to say goodnight to the christmas lights.

so here are some pictures from our christmas tree outing.

they were in particularly good picture taking moods

walking to the back 40.... that's where the best trees are. ok, so we all picked trees from the first half of the lot, but if you don't look how will you know?

run, ava! she biffed a lot. it was pretty funny. i think she knew it was something funny and did it on purpose sometimes.

UNCLE MIKE!!! connor was randomly yelling at uncle mike who was about 50 yards away.

here's our tree!

mush puppy!

this is fun, dad.

connor wandering..... and wandering.... and wandering.

here's nicole walking back and forth between a couple of trees. it takes her FOR...E....VER to pick a tree. she's always last.

mommy, it's really cold. pick a tree already.

the parentals tree

and the winner is....