Christmas Time is Near…

 

Last Friday was our annual Cody Family Christmas Tree Decorating Day. The tradition always starts with heading to a local tree farm to pick out our tree. Since we’ve lived here, we’ve discovered a great farm that has both cut-your-own & Frasier Firs already cut (that are really not too expensive!). The man that owns it is very knowledgable & friendly. We found our tree almost the first minute we stepped out of the car.

After we got it tied up and onto the car, we walked around a little to look at the cut-your-own trees. It was a cold day but sunny and nice.

  

 

Then when we got home it was lunch time. We traditionally have Pizza Dip with chips, and this year we had it as our lunch! We also had popcorn. (And the kids had a banana, just in case you wonder about the health factor!) And we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas while Daddy got the tree up and strung the lights.

Then it was time to decorate! Leah was so excited, because she knew there was a little tin of ornaments with her name on it. I have been saving the ornaments each kid gets every year and Leah’s already amassed quite a collection (including Princess ones, of course). She was eager to put the ornaments on the tree, and she actually did a really good job spreading them out!

Abigail slept through the decorating process, thankfully, and so far she really hasn’t gotten into much. We did put a few empty boxes & stuffed animals under the tree in hopes that they would distract her from the ornaments and she loves the ones with bells to shake. Hopefully her curious side will not show up as she notices the tree more.

 

And the finished product! It didn’t take very long at all this year. We named our tree Ilene because it leans a little. (It even started to fall over the other night. We’ve since tied it to the wall!)

Friday evening we took our annual trip to Meadow Lights, which is only about 15 minutes from our house. There was a ton of people there and we had to wait in line a long time to ride the train to see the lights, but there was no one in line to see Santa when we first arrived! Leah and Andrew had no problem telling him what they wanted. Abigail was not a fan. Still, I love her face in the picture.

We really enjoyed the light show and know the kids will always remember our little family Christmas traditions!