All About the Tree

Two weeks ago Ben was in the midst of end-of-the-semester crunch, so on Saturday morning I let him sleep in while I (with a little help from the kids) made garland for our Christmas tree.  I wanted it to be nice and long, so it ended up being a more involved project than the kids were interested in, but they did help some.  Here's proof:

Jack's favorite part was cutting up the colored straws.

Eliza's favorite part was eating the Cheerios off of the garland.

The string ended up being 20 feet long, so I thought it would be cool to take a picture of the kids in the background to get some perspective of the length.  They were less than cooperative.  I particularly like this one with Jack blocking Cat's kick using a wiffle ball.

That afternoon we ventured to the far-off land of Provo to buy a tree from Wyoming from a guy who set up a tree lot in his front yard.  This is our first year buying a real tree (our previous not-so-real tree was about 10 years old and we decided it wasn't worth moving across the country) and we envisioned ourselves going to a tree farm or buying a $10 permit to go cut one down in a natural forest, but alas, the end-of-the-semester crunch meant that we needed to find something in less than 2+ hours.

This man had half of his yard sectioned off for these faux-snow-covered trees.  They looked really pretty, but I can only imagine what my kids would do with that white stuff all over the house.

Eliza and the Grinch were twins.

She loved watching the mostly-frozen waterfall in the corner of the yard.

Behold, our tree!

Jack tried to drag the tree to the car.  He didn't get very far.

Not much to look at, sadly.  But the small selection just 2 weeks before Christmas, and the prices prohibited us from getting a really nice one.  If you think it looks rough in this picture, though, you should see it after Jack pulled it over.  Yep.  Even worse.  (He got a toy tangled up in the garland and instead of asking for help to get the toy loose, he thought that if he pulled hard enough the toy would release itself.  He got a mouthful of pine needles, so perhaps he learned his lesson.)

Jack, getting a little help with a glass ornament.

Cat designated this part of the tree her section, and filled it with miscellaneous ornaments she's made at home or in school or preschool over the last few years.

She loves this sea horse ornament.

Eliza loved this big silver bell.

She also stuck a spool of ribbon on the end of a branch.  Way to be creative, E!

Our sad little tree covered with icicle lights, since we haven't been able to find our regular lights.