Big tree or little tree?

I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely! Thanksgiving Eve Chris and I headed out to see New Moon all by ourselves! I have never left Abby but when our sitter showed up at 9pm she was soooo tired and ready to go to bed. I laid her down, she rolled onto her side shoved her thumb in her mouth and was out. Chris and I spent 3 blissful hours completely alone, well never mind the hundred other people in the theater. I don't know if the movie really was a crazy amount better then the first or if it was because I had no one to hold, sshh and interrupt me with potty break requests but man did I love it! The next morning Chris was in charge of the ward football game, which meant yummy left over doughnuts for us!

We spent Thanksgiving Day with two fun families from the state department who live here at Oakwood. We split up the food assignment which was soooo nice (who really wants to cook all that food for one family, half of whom won't touch anything but corn and bread?) It also meant considerably less of a mess to clean up. The kids loved the fruit and cheese kabobs off this melon based turkey

(how cute is that). On Black Friday Chris and I agreed that there were no crazy door busters that we needed and Chris actually had to go to work :(... for a very short time period with a nice long lunch haa! By the end of the day we had actually ended up going to Target, Toys R Us and the Mall (Tyson's was INSANE!). So Christmas shopping for the boys is all done!
Today was wonderful! Every year I tell Chris how much I want to cut down our own tree. Well seen as we will have a palm tree as a Christmas tree next year, we decided now was the time! We loaded the cuties up in the car and drove out to my favorite farm, the homestead, to cut down a tree. As we were driving there I thought about an article I had just read about shooting in the middle of the afternoon and how nearly impossible it is but how if you can do it you get amazing blue skies. I thought well this ought to be a challenge! When we pulled up the boys were so excited. They hopped out and after throwing rocks for a while we went on the hunt for the “biggest one”, that is what Sam wanted. Liam wanted this tree:

I told him that it was too little and wouldn’t fit our ornaments or very many presents underneath it. He let me take a picture of him by it so he could always remember it.



Then he ran off to be with his best bud.
The two of them spent WAY more time picking flowers then looking at trees.


Sam told me that the flowers were “So beautiful” and smelled “lalicious”.

It was pretty cold and windy and Sam is like me and hates being cold, so I actually got him to wear his coat again, even if he doesn't like it.

Abby spent the majority of the time hanging out in Daddy’s coat being all snuggly.


When we did finally find “the one” we went and got our awesome saw. They told us if we needed we could come back and get a chain saw. I thought I could do it and then Liam offered his help (more like demanded he help) so I knew it would be super fast.


I got about 1/3 the way through and let Chris take over. I was holding Abby and trying to take pictures so I felt bad when Sam crawled onto his back to supervise.

I just started laughing when Liam crawled on also.

Poor Chris, trying saw and be horsey for two boys. Chris got it all cut down and with some help dragged it over to this cool machine that shakes all the dead or loose needles off it.

The boys really got a kick out of this. But then they got distracted by the tractor.

That’s when the wheels started coming off. It was cold and windy so both boys were begging to go to the car but I REALLY wanted just one picture of all of us. Well this is what happens when you drag kids into pictures:

We got the kids loaded up and Chris and the nice worker loaded the netted up tree onto the top of the car.

We drove up to the farm house to pay and let the boys out to see the goats and grab some apples. The owner was nice enough to take one last picture of all of us. (Abby's huge eyes are a shout out to her cousin Ava).

Sam thought it would be a good idea to grab a bag for himself until he realized how heavy these huge apples are.

I got one of their Carmel apples and a cup of hot cider.

We stopped by the local feed and seed for my favorite BBQ pork sandwiches (Thank you REESE!) and headed home. It was a really fun morning. What is hilarious is when Chris brought the tree up after nap time he had to work forever to get it into the super cheap and way to small tree holder I purchased. For some reason we could NOT get it straight, so Chris headed out and got a nicer tree holder… yeah our tree grew completely crooked. I mean WAY crooked. Chris and I are still trying to figure out what we can do to fix this gorgeous tree that is now propped up against the wall. We are considering fishing line and duct tape.