Christmas Tree Time

The day after Thanksgiving is our day for going out and getting our Christmas tree and decorating it. We don't do the whole getting up in the middle of the night to go shopping and stand in mile long lines for something that's going to be sold out by the time we get to it. I prefer doing most of my Christmas shopping online. As much of it as I can. It's so much easier that way. So we went and got our tree on Black Friday, and we were all very excited to pick it out, bring it home and start decorating it together. This is my favorite time of year. I love all the pretty Christmas decorations all around, and I love having a pretty Christmas tree in the house.

Anna checking out all the Christmas trees. (Her hat looks funny because she kept pushing it halfway off her head.)

We found a tree.

Grace helped us pick out the tree too.

Watching them trim up the bottom of the tree.

Getting it set up in the house.

Anna putting the star on top.

"I did it!"


Here are some of our new ornaments we got at The Incredible Christmas Place in Gatlinburg this Summer....

This is the ornament we got on our honeymoon in Gatlinburg.

And this is the ornament we got this year for our 10th anniversary in Gatlinburg.

Our new family ornament.

Noah decorating the tree.

We have a lot of ornaments down low this year.

Anna decorating the tree. She only broke one ornament.

Our tree.

Grace was taking a nap while we were decorating the tree so when she woke up I had to take her picture in front of it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving this year. I'm so thankful that for the first time in three years everyone was healthy and well. Two Thanksgivings ago for Anna's first Thanksgiving Noah got a stomach flu which spread around our house to all of us. Even poor baby Anna who was not quite 10 months at the time was throwing up. That Thanksgiving was postponed for at least a week before we were able to have it. Then last Thanksgiving my grandma wasn't able to join us because she was sick with a bad cold which ended up being pneumonia, but this Thanksgiving we were all together and all healthy. Not one of us even had a sniffle or a cough, which is a miracle believe me because with Noah in school he usually brings home all kinds of sicknesses from all the kids he's around everyday. We all enjoyed our yummy feast that evening and then had many leftovers to look forward to for the next few days. That's the best part. I don't have to cook dinner for several days. We love our Thanksgiving leftovers.

We were getting our plates ready so we could dig in, but Anna was already enjoying her meal.

Getting ready to dig in to the pies.

Grace wearing Anna's old baby's 1st Thanksgiving outfit.

Here was Anna in this outfit 2 years ago.

Thanksgiving Preparations

I got started the day before Thanksgiving making all the pies. I made an apple pie, pumpkin pie, and an oreo pie. Noah and Anna joined me in the kitchen and took turns helping make the pumpkin pie. They both love helping out when I'm baking something. So I had to take some pictures of them.

And I had to throw in a cutie picture of Grace too.

Christmas Decorating

I think we've all been very excited about Christmas coming. I know I couldn't wait to start decorating for Christmas as soon as Halloween was over. So last week I got started on some of the indoor decorations. Then this week we finished it up. I wanted all of our indoor stuff up before Thanksgiving except the tree. We also got started on some of our outdoor stuff too. I love this time of year and all the pretty decorations, and now I can't wait to get our tree and all of us decorate it together. Here are a few pictures of some of our indoor Christmas decorations, and then a picture of Anna after we were done decorating.

Gracie's 8 Months Old

Gracie turned 8 months old on Friday. She's getting so big, and it's going by so fast. Before I know it we'll be celebrating her first birthday. I'm not ready for that at all. She's becoming less and less of my little baby every day it seems. She rarely falls asleep in my arms anymore, and I miss that. I loved when I'd sit out in the living room at night watching tv, and she'd be sound asleep laying on my chest. Wish they didn't have to grow so fast, but I love watching them as they do. Now here's a few new pictures of our Gracie on her 8 month birthday.

Gracie Gets A Tooth

Last night Grace was chewing around on my finger, and I thought I felt a tooth coming in. I checked in her mouth today and sure enough there's a little, tiny tooth starting to poke through. She's a month ahead of the other two kids with this milestone. They were both nine months old before they got a tooth, but Grace will be eight months on Friday.

Noah's School Fall Festival

Last weekend we went to Noah's school fall festival. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm day for it. Noah had a great time. He pretty much stayed on all the inflatables the whole time and just kept going from one to another then back again. Anna doesn't really like inflatables for some reason and refuses to go on them, but she enjoyed the games and prizes and collected many of them. At the end when they were taking the inflatables down they both enjoyed playing on the playground for awhile.

Coming out of the obstacle course.

Coming out of the big caterpillar.

The big slide.

The bounce house.

Digging in the treasure chest.

Anna on the playground.

Noah on the playground.

Just Some Pics of the Kidlets

Anna's latest obsession is coloring. She loves to color, and really doesn't care if she has a coloring book to color in. One day she went in Noah's room and out of all the coloring books in his desk drawers she came out with a plain old notebook to color in. She also loves dinosaurs lately too. She'll tell you she's a big dinosaur and roar at you, and when she wants you to color with her she'll ask you to draw a dinosaur for her. Here she is coloring one night with Daddy.

Gracie loves that she can sit up so well on her own. She is really enjoying playing with Anna's old baby toys. The only problem is Anna still thinks they're her toys, and she's always coming over as soon as Gracie starts playing with something and taking it away. Here's Gracie playing with some of her favorites before Anna comes along and takes them away.

These last photos are a crazy little photo shoot I tried to have one day of all three kids. It's been a little while since I took a picture of all three of them together, but I did not succeed in getting a very good one unfortunately. These pictures are the silly ones I ended up with.

This one's my favorite. Priceless! Love the faces they're making.