Mall Santa 2009

Here's this year's photo of the boys with Santa at the mall. This is the 10th year we've done this. The photographer was laughing at how big the boys looked on Santa's lap. They do look big, too funny!

Happy Birthday Doreen!

Happy Birthday my friend!! Since you never let me take your picture, I can't showcase your lovely face here on the blog. Oh darn you say, feel free to send me a photo and I'll update this post. You know you want to. *wink* Have a wonderful day today!! Love you!

Christmas Eve 2009

This year Nona & Papa were going to be on their way to LaGrande on Christmas morning, so we celebrated Christmas Eve with them. We had Chinese food for dinner, since there were not many choices open by that time of the evening.



After we were all stuffed we headed over to Nona & Papa's house to exchange gifts. Here's the boys in front of their tree.




















They had a little train set up under the tree, so we had to check that out.











OK, shall we open gifts?



A "Bind-it-all" for Kandi - yay!!



A Snuggie for Nona from the boys.




















A duck hunt game for Papa from the boys.





Apparently Mateo was still full from the Chinese food.




















Now to figure out this duck game. The duck flies around the room and you're supposed to shoot it down with 3 shots.





That duck's pretty crazy! Can you see it flying in the middle of the picture, near the lamp? It was kind of scarry, lol.



Now it's headed for the hallway. Look out Jaxon!





I think we figured out that you need higher ceilings if you're going to play it inside the house. So, we moved on to We Fish for the Wii, another gift for Papa from us. Mateo had to show us how it was done, then Papa got a turn.









We had a great time playing together! Thank you Nona & Papa for the wonderful evening and gifts!

40 & Fabulous!

Happy Birthday my dear friend Linda!!




















I hope I look as fabulous as you when I'm your age, lol. mwah!!

Christmas Tree 2009 - Part Deux

So after it's crazy ride home, our Christmas tree made it into the house.




















It actually sat bailed up for a couple of days because I wasn't quite ready for the monster to be unleashed. Once the furniture was moved around and space was made, I gave the go ahead to un-bail it. Chico had Jaxon and Mateo start unwinding the string.




























Whoa, look out boys, it's falling!




















Good catch Chico!

Well here she is. It's like the Griswald's tree in Christmas Vacation, lol.




















Step one, getting those lights on, is my least favorite part. Finally got the star on and the garland, with much wobbling around on the 10 ft. rickety ladder. I'm not totally afraid of heights, but when I have nothing steady to hang onto I get a little fearful.




















So here's the final product...




















And a few more photos of the house.













And a couple of my favorite ornaments.

Mateo's first Christmas - 2000.



Jaxon's first Christmas - 2003.



Whew, so glad it's finally done!

Christmas Tree 2009 - Part 1

OK, it's getting ridiculous how many photos I have all saved up for blog posts, but still no posts. Aaahhh, so much to do, so little time nowadays. I don't know how everyone else manages, but me, I'm not so good at it.

Anyway, I guess at least this post is pretty timely. I will still be posting a bunch of old stuff at some point, but I'll worry about that later. This post is about this year's hunt for our perfect Christmas Tree. Last Sunday we went out to Northwest Family Tree Farm to find "the" tree. This is our 4th year of going out there. It's about a 20 minute drive from our house, so not too bad. We do have tree farms that are less than 5 minutes from our house, but we like the horse drawn wagon ride and hot cocoa at this location.

We always get a pretty large tree because our living room ceiling is pretty high, so it can handle one that's pretty tall. In years past the large trees have been very heavy when they get so big and Chico didn't want to deal with lifting that heavy tree off of the top of the Excursion, so on Saturday he went outside and got a little crafty. He created an attachment that fit onto the hitch and would hold the tree upright. Here he is with his creation.




















He's so proud of his invention. :)

It was a beautiful day to go looking for our tree, but it was so cold. The car thermostat read 36, but it was windy, so it felt a lot colder outside.



Here we are all bundled up. We walked straight over to what I considered the perfect tree, so we tagged it with our name and went to check out the rest just to be sure. The boys weren't too happy with how cold it was.











Well, we didn't see anything else that looked as good as the first tree, so we decided to take a quick spin around the farm on the horse drawn wagon and then cut the tree down.











I thought we might be able to get a family shot out in the trees to use for our Christmas card this year, but there were hardly any people there and no one was near us at any point, so we got the normal Chico and the boys and me and the boys separately. This is our tree in the background before it's life was taken, lol.





Jaxon wanted to help Chico cut the tree, so here he is cutting away.





Look at the size of that tree. We had it shaken and baled to make the trip home easier.













We had a little hot chocolate to warm up. Did I mention it felt like it was freezing outside?! I asked one of the ladies working there if she'd take our photo. It's not the greatest, but it's the four of us together at least.



So, here it is, Chico's invention in action. Look at that ridiculous tree! It looked like the "leaning tower of treeza", lol. The test was to see if it would make it home in tact. The people working at the farm were watching us, wondering the same thing I'm sure.




















We got lots of stares on our way home. I don't blame them, if I'd seen a big suv with a tree standing several feet above it in an upright position I'd be staring too. I tried taking a picture as we were driving of the car's shadow. Can you see it?



Once we got home I told Chico he should measure it and see how tall it really was, so he did. The top of the tree was about 14 feet in the air. Crazy! Here are a few more shots of Chico's creation.


























More photos to come of the tree once it made it inside the house. Thanks for hanging in there with this long post.