It truly is the most wonderful time of the year! We got our christmas tree at the beginning of December, and I'm sad to say this is the first year (possibly EVER) that we did not cut down a tree! We drove out to the tree farm on the one day we had to get the tree, and the tree farm was closed! Alex was disappointed since we'd told her we would be decorating a tree that night, and Marlon was leaving to go out of town the next day so we would have had to wait for another week to get a tree. SO for the sake of our daughter, we pulled into Lowes on the way home and picked out the biggest tree we could find, paid about $20 more than we would have paid at the tree farm, threw it on top of the car, and off we went. Marlon was relieved that he didn't have to do the sawing, then dragging, of the tree through the tree farm, but I told him not to get too excited because we will never be doing this again! The experience of going out and finding the tree, cutting it down, and getting it home is always full of great memories that we will continue for our kids!
Our wonderful neighbors hosted a gingerbread house decorating party for a bunch of the neighborhood kids a few weeks ago. They purchased gingerbread houses for all of the kids so they could each have their own house to decorate, and set up everything in their basement for the kids. My kids loved decorating (and eating) the house and candy. We followed up the decorating with a big neighborhood pot luck dinner. We have the greatest neighbors--seriously. We have so many random, unplanned pot luck dinners where we just get together with anyone who is around and end up having a huge meal and a ton of fun socializing. We are so lucky!
We then had a party a few weeks ago at another neighbor's house--an ugly christmas sweater party. FUN!! My friend Ehren and I spent the day before the party going around to stores in search of tacky, ugly christmas attire (why is it that when you're looking for the stuff you can't seem to find it anywhere?!?!) and after having no luck, we decided to make our own! I decided to dress our family in red (sweatshirts for Marlon and I, turtlenecks for the kids) and we decorated them with tacky holiday decor. I went with a theme for our family, so we all had our initial on the front in green felt. Let's just say that Marlon was mortified at what he had to wear, but he did wear it in good fun and our family ended up winning the prize for the tackiest outfits!! I did not get many photos since Marlon seemed to disappear when the camera came out, but I do believe my neighbors got lucky with some pictures, so I'll have to post those when I find them!
Just to give you an idea of what the kids were wearing, see below (Alex was very excited that her shirt had jingle bells all over it!)
Bryan and Ehren in their tacky shirts
More to come on our December activities!
