Our Christmas Tree

It's been our family tradition ever since we were married to buy our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. I never had a real tree growing up, but Steve's family always did, even chopping down their own tree when they lived in Idaho. So, like every year, we drove to Home Depot (I still would really like to cut one down ourselves one day), and Alexa and Jared helped us choose a tree.

It was fun for the kids to watch the man wrap up the tree. We've went with the kids to pick out the tree every year since they were born, except the first year when they were eight month olds. This was the first year they seemed a lot more interested in the process. They definitely were much more excited about the decorating, though.

My dad had given us a train set a few years ago, so Steve and the kids set that up first. It's funny how the kids really didn't seem to want to play with the train that much this Christmas season. I would have thought Jared would have been much more into controlling the train since he likes his Brio train set, but the cars kept falling off the tracks, so I think he just kept getting frustrated.

After Steve set up the tree, Alexa helped him string lights, and then put the star up at the top of the tree.

After that we put on our first Christmas CD of the season and hung up ornaments. I got so into this with the kids that I forgot to take any pictures of anyone hanging the ornaments! They really loved that part of the day the most. And, I'm happy to report that this was the first year the kids didn't knock the tree down. Not once.