O Christmas Tree

We have a long-standing Christmas-tree-cutting-down tradition which almost always leads to an adventure.  Last year's story http://indianatomandjen.blogspot.com/2010/12/o-christmas-tree-o-christmas-tree.html was one of the best.  This year we tried to avoid the same trouble and went on December 12 at 5:30 pm.  The place was open, there were plenty of trees AND it was still light outside, but the tall trees were gone.  The guy pointed us to a section of the farm where we could hunt.  There were two trees over 6 feet tall.  One had no branches on the lower 24 inches and the other was missing the top 12 inches.  Craig pointed out that if we bought the decapitated tree we could avoid the annual what-should-we-put-on-top-of-the-tree fight.  Craig likes this tacky light-up star.  Everyone else likes the classy angel.  Avoiding the argument sounded great and we bought the topless tree.  Then the inspiration set in.  I put a pizza pan on the flat spot and Craig donated one of his garden gnomes.  I rather like the affect. 

The gnome is a little dwarfed (haha, how about that pun) by the tree, but hey, we did the best we could.  Here are some other pics of our festivities.

My sister-in-law got this at a Relief Society activity.  She edited the title and sent it on to Craig.  It's a toddler board book with sound buttons about a certain body noise.  That makes me laugh.

I'm always taking the pictures on Christmas so I'm never in them.  I got one of the kids to take one of me this year to prove I was there.

Kelly had 7 chapters of this book read by the time we finished opening presents.  That is speedy reading.

I think this is the only picture I've taken this year where I've caught Craig smiling.  Too bad the sun was shining all wrong.