New Family Tradition

We are super excited this year to continue with some of the Christmas traditions that we have started for our family, and even more excited about creating new ones. For the past 6 years we have had a beautiful faux Christmas tree (including last year when we used Kim & Terry's). Now that we are (almost) in our house and will be here for Christmas we decided to get rid of the old one and start the tradition of getting a real one! We have always dreamed of getting a real one, but thought it was a waste when we lived in MN and were never home for Christmas. We decided that we will start the tradition of getting our tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving...and apparently that means rain or shine! This past Sunday was not the ideal weather for picking out a tree, but we bundled up and headed to the beautiful Whitetail Tree Farm.

Much to our surprise, when we went into the lodge, Santa was there! Karter had a tough time remembering what was on his Christmas list....and Kaden was hiding behind me!

He's still trying to remember!

After walking around checking out all the trees (in the rain), we finally picked this beauty! A Spruce tree.

Karter has clearly had enough of the rain!

This is one of the only times that Kaden would actually let us put him down. Whenever we would try, he would start yelling "boots are muddy!" First of all, he didn't have boots on, and second, he hadn't taken a step...how could they be muddy?!

After we decided on our tree, one of the workers came by to tag our tree and chop it down for us.

We promised the boys suckers if they were good outside, they were excited to pick out their suckers back in the lodge.

Sticky mess!!

The Boy Scouts helped strap the tree to the van and we headed home to start decorating.

Kristoffer made a fresh cut on the tree and then we put it in the stand.

It took us a bit to find our ornaments outside in the rec room. We knew they were out there someone in the pile of stuff that we have, but it took a little bit of digging to find them. We are still missing a few boxes, but hopefully soon(?) we will be able to find them when "The Great Move of 2011" happens.

Kaden is in love with the tree and really enjoys looking at the ornaments. In the 5 days it has been up, we have had 2 casualties...opps!

Karter was such a great helper with the ornaments.

The workers at the tree farm all wore shirts that said "Family memories that last forever" and we are glad, despite the rain, that we are creating those memories for our family!