A Tree That Only a Family of Five Kids Could Love

One of the things we were really excited about for Christmas this year was going to cut down a real tree together as a family.  We even left the fake one back in the states in storage.  However then we heard that the Boy Scouts were having a tree stand fundraiser.  Further more we were asked to work one of the shifts for it.  We felt a little obligated to support the Boy Scouts and purchased a tree there.  The selection was bad when we were there….they got a new shipment a few days later, but alas we brought home our Charlie Brown “twiggy” tree and tried to fall in love with it.  It had the hardiest needles ever.  I know where the phrase “pine needles” comes from now.  Some of these got in our rug and if we stepped on one it would go straight in our foot just like a needle.  We also had problems with lights.  The German ones are all separate strands that don’t plug in to each other.  We thought of several different ideas, but finally went and got 110 volt and had to use them on a transformer.  (one of the main reasons we didn’t want to use the fake tree is that we would have to run it on a transformer)…Oh well!  It took several days…almost a week before we got the tree decorated while we were trying to work out the kinks.  The more we stared at our twiggy, undecorated tree the more it made us want to go get a different one, but the kids liked it and wouldn’t let us.

The more we decorated it and got our our familiar ornaments on it, the more it started to look cute.  And before we knew it, we loved our Christmas Tree!  Twiggy, sharp needles, sap oozing and all. 

A few days later I bought a few more red ornaments to feel in some spaces on the tree.  Cole helped me put them on!  I love little kids and their ornament skills.  He was so smilie and cheerful.  Christmas is so fun! You make me smile kiddo! 
What a turkey
Jake’s Gingerbread house from school….and Josh’s hat that his teacher’s gave him.  He loved making it stand on end like this!
 

 This was our first Christmas season to have the Elf on the Shelf in our home.  He came on the first week of December.  We read his book and proudly named him....oh wait it took awhile to agree on a name.  Some wanted to call him Charlie, some wanted Nick (short for St. Nicholas) Some of us wanted to name him Dasher after the speediest of all the Reindeer so he could swiftly fly back and forth to the North Pole.  Daddy had the silliest idea of all: Fernando which mom quickly vetoed.  So  finally everyone agreed to name him: "Charlie Nick Dasher"....but he mostly goes by Charlie.  Charlie changed places every night after reporting to Santa the daily behaviour and then we got to find him in his new hiding place each morning.  Hanna spearheaded this particular tradition as it was her first year to be one of Santa's "helper" Elves.  Welcome to the family Charlie!