Oh Santa........

It is Christmas Eve and we haven't made a trip to the mall to see Santa yet. We weren't going to go because the kids really didn't want to and I don't have the patience but at 2:00 this afternoon we decided we needed to go.
Everytime we have gone to the mall during this past month I have thought that we needed to get pictures by this huge tree so I got the chance to take one today since both kids were actually with me.

This is the whole tree. It is big.

We had good and bad news when we got down to Santa. The good news was that he was there, real beard and all. The bad news is the line was about 2 hours long and Santa was five minutes away from a 30 minute break. Looking on the positive side that was atleast a 2 1/2 hour wait to see a fat man in a fancy red suit. NO!!!!!!

We decided to take our own pictures instead. Notice in between Megan and Alex, It's the big red guy. We have the real Santa in our picture!!!!!!! :)

This one is by far my favorite. It is a picture of Santa on the wall that we stood by and took a picture of. It's almost like they really got to see Santa and it only took 5 minutes and saved us $25.00. What a perfect picture!!!!!! :)

Choir concert

Megan had her choir concert on Thursday night so we went down to watch. They did a really good job and sounded beautiful.

Megan, Gillian, and Olivia. Wonder how they all ended up right next to each other????

The whole choir. There are a lot of kids up there.

Megan's friend Sana, she is in the orchestra.

Megan looking annoyed because she didn't love the song they were singing!!!!!

Gillian looking good!!!!

Olivia is so excited. She was stuck behind a tall boy and he was constantly getting in my camera's way!!!!

Maggi is in the band.

They are such a musical group. :) They all sounded really good and it was a fun night.

Christmas Tree Shopping

We spent all day Sunday getting our Christmas tree and putting it up. We were going to wait one more week to get it but the weather was nice last Sunday and it's suppose to rain this Sunday. I don't like to be wet or cold so the dry Sunday was the winner.
We started off at Denny's. It seemed silly to make breakfast at home when we were actually leaving the house early enough to eat breakfast out. We rarely go out to breakfast because we just don't move that fast in the mornings. Alex at breakfast. He always LOVES to eat!!!!!

We are back at the Snow Shoe tree farm. We go back to the same place every year. They have a huge selection of trees and they drill a hole in the bottom for our stand so there is no work at straightening it at all when we get home. Hammer in the base and decorate!!!!!

This year we actually cut down our own tree. Last year we were kind of lazy so we just walked out into the trees and took a picture and then went back up front and bought one of the ones already cut. We did all the work this year.

Here they are cutting it down. Proof that we actually did it. :)

Alex is helping with the lights. Megan actually did most of them but Alex took a good picture acting like he was helping.

The almost final tree. We got a bunch of new bulbs this year for something different so we now have alot of trees in our house. Alex also has one in his room with all of our fun hallmark ornaments and normal ones that we usually put on the tree and we have one in the living room with all of my frosty friends. There is Christmas everwhere you turn in here.

More of Megan's pictures

I think most everyone knows that Megan really likes being in charge of the camera. She always get some really cool pictures and on Sunday she stole the camera again. Here are a few of the pictures that she got this time.

I always love all of the pictures that Megan takes so it is fun to be able to share some of them. I think she is getting really good at taking them so stay tuned for her next masterpieces!!!!

Frosty Friends

These are all of my Frosty Friend ornaments. A friend started buying these Hallmark ornaments for me when they first came out 30 years ago and since then Stefanie has been buying them for me. I think they are on number 31 of the series now and I have all but 3 or 4 of them. I have decided that this will be the one and only Hallmark Keepsake ornament collection that will never end so we went and bought a fake tree this weekend to display them all on. It turned out really cute and hopefully it has enough space left for the rest of this never ending series!!!!!

They are all so cute. I can't even pick my favorite.

The final tree. I even put white lights on it which is a huge no no in my book. I normally do not like white Christmas lights at all. If I wanted white lights I would just turn on my bathroom light or go sit in my living room. For some reason I have always liked the colored lights but this year we are mixing it up a bit and I really like how it looks. I guess I can't complain about everyone's white lights anymore.

We even stole my cousin Jami's idea about putting a santa hat on top. We didn't have a tree topper but we did have a hat so it fit just perfect!!!!!

Just plain funny!!!!!

Over the summer Megan was helping Stefanie clean out her closet and they found Stefanie's wedding dress and the custom vacuum seal that she paid so much for had not worked so they decided to try the dress on. Megan has been wanting to get my dress down and see if mine had the same vaccuum seal problem but I haven't wanted to crawl up in the attic. Well, Megan and I got down our Christmas stuff yesterday and the first thing she did was find the dress. She brought it in the house to find out that the vacuum seal (which I also paid a fortune for) had been ruined on mine too so we decided to try it on.

It cracks me up that it is a little bit to big. I don't know what happened but I guess that I used to be much larger up top. I could have fit whole roles of toilet paper in there. It was pretty darn funny!!!!!!

It is definately to big on Megan. Good thing she won't be needing one of these for a very long time. She looked much cuter in Stefanie's anyway.

Stefanie still looks so good in hers. She obviously had much better taste in dresses than I did. I think I was just to lazy about buying mine.

Megan looked cute in Stefanie's although she won't be borrowing it for a very long time either.

We had fun playing around with our dresses. It is back to Christmas decorating now!!!!! :)

Victorian Christmas

Megan and I went down to the Victorian Christmas on Thursday night. We didn't find anything good there this year so we decided to take pictures instead. Megan was in charge of the camera so she got some cute ones again. Well, I guess I had the camera for the ones that she is in but she took the rest. :)

I took this one!!!!! Merry Christmas.

Megan with the happy reindeer.

Megan took this picture of the water fountain. We had a fun time but were disappointed at how much it has changed over the years. We got good pictures if nothing else!!!!!