The Tree Farm

Every year, our family enjoys a day out together choosing just the perfect tree for our home to celebrate the Christmas season.

Following a hayride into tree neverland, we all hop off and begin our hunt for the tree. It is always so interesting to me to see each child choose a tree and their reasoning behind it. We have everything from the "Clark Griswold" size chooser - aka the bigger the better, to the economical chooser to the "lets just get this one so we can go get snacks!" chooser.....

Maddox just decided that her siblings could choose the tree while she made her list for Santa.

Alas, the tree was chosen and chopped down. On to the Christmas Cafe for some yummy eats and treats.

I think all six of us would agree that our favorite part this year was playing hide and seek in the Christmas trees. We ran around for what seemed like hours hiding from one another and dashing from tree to tree.

I love this pic.....P is saying "I found YOU!" and MK is looking like "Where?Where is she?"

Sweet Maddox.....again, just so glad to have her HOME! As this season progresses, I find myself reflecting on where we were in the process last year to bring her home. We were so close to having her yet it was agonizing to wait for each approval knowing she was across the world without us.

Every year, the boys have received a Lionel train holiday car from my father. Last year they received the ever-so-important engine and track. Dutifully, we set it up around our tree and they all enjoyed the train fun. However, we realized during the fun that our "real" tree was causing a real mess on the track - the needles were dropping and it was hard for the train to get around the track. Soooo, we were off to Target early the day after Christmas to purchase a not-so-real tree for the train to reside under during the subsequent holidays. The funny part....this year, we forgot we had purchased the tree so it was a real surprise to us when we were pulling out all of the decor and we found this big box with a big tree.....and the even funnier part was putting the tree together with the boys! I grew up with an artificial tree so I knew how this part worked - match the colors, etc. The boys were just bewildered by it all.

The final not-so-real product. P was feeling horrible in this pic, not yet quite over the looming bug that was in our home during Thanksgiving. Amidst feeling horrible, he was determined to get the tree up and the train running before retiring to bed.