How Lovely Are Thy Branches

I was going to title this "Oh Christmas Tree", but I figured that had been done before. This is one of my most favorite Christmas/Thanksgiving traditions. Although much of the last nine years I've stayed in a warm van with a little baby for most of the trip. Maybe Farris, who trudges through knee deep snow dragging a prickly tree wouldn't agree. But I'm glad he still does it! There is a wonderful smell up in the mountains in the winter, you can't get it anywhere else. Here's Farris about ready to set out. He packs kids in, hands them off to aunts/uncles and then packs trees out. This is how he can eat lots of pie and stay thin.

And here's our tree all put together! Our tradition has been to set the tree up and decorate it for FHE the first Monday after Thanksgiving. My tradition is to light the tree twice. Once when I take all our working light strings and get 2/3rds of the way up, and then again after I unwrap the lights and try again. Last year Farris bought another package so I wouldn't have to wrap it twice...and then we got a bigger tree this year. Our tree will never win awards for being the trendiest, or even have matching ornaments, but I love that each year we build our collection a little more so that as we bring them out of the boxes the kids can say "oh, I remember that one!" Someday I want to have a snowflake tree too, all silver and white and blue, but I think we'll always have a kids tree.

Felicity trying to get her favorite ornaments up high away from Seth. It's a week after we originally decorated and more ornaments are getting moved up higher. The bottom third of the tree is getting empty. Although there is plenty of ornaments scattered on the floor around the tree.

Farris getting in on it. We mostly let the kids go crazy, but sometimes we step in so one branch doesn't end up with 12 ornaments.

Happy he found one of his! We try to give the kids a new ornament each year. And I try to buy them in the after Christmas sales. Love Target for that, by the way.

Now that our tree is up it feels a lot more like Christmas. We just need some snow...please?