A few of my favorite things

We got our tree this weekend. What was supposed to be a fun trip to the mountains to cut down our tree turned into a fun trip to a local tree farm turned into getting our tree from the church lot. We thought it would be fun to cut down our own but it was getting late in the season and we were running out of weekends so a local tree lot was our best bet. Rich and Steph went to check it our before we got there and when she called i heard the words "do not go there". She said all the good trees get cut down the day after thanksgiving so the leftovers were only 3-5 feet tall. We need one slightly bigger than that so we headed to church and grabbed a beautiful 8 foot tree.


One of my favorite things to do is decorate the tree because there are so many memories connected to our ornaments. These are some of my favorites.




I love this ornament because it is a reminder of how blessed we were to have a little girl in our family this year. Emily was 6 days old on her first Christmas.






















My mom bought Em this ornament when she was two years old. The story behind it goes like this...the kids had spent the night at my parents and Austin had a soccer game the next morning. When Rob and I got to the game my mom and Emily were kicking the ball back and forth. The next thing I see is the ball flying at Emily's face, it hit her so hard that it literally picked her up off the ground and she landed flat on her back. My mom felt terrible but when she saw this ornament she knew she had to get it for her.



I love these homemade ornaments too. Our tree is covered with them. Austin made the reindeer when he was in preschool,the tree in kindergarten and Taylor made the angel when he was four.

Rob made this star in elementary school. When we got married 99% of our ornaments were ones he was given during his childhood or ones he made growing up. We have since added many others but they still have a special place on our tree.




















I pick up ornaments when we travel. The boat is from Martha's vineyard when we went on our missions trip , the star is from Cabo and the ears are from our trip to Disneyland. It is amazing how all of the memories from our trips come flooding back when I see these.














These ornaments hold a special place in my heart. When Rob and I got married and I had Austin Rob was off playing basketball every other weekend(Thurs-Sun) so it was just me and a baby. The nights got long so to pass the time Terry got me these ornament kits to make. I would put Austin to bed and would sit for hours in front of the TV making them. We have a gingerbread man, woman and house, three different sizes of Santa and the stuffed Santas. I don't know how many of these I ended up making that year but it was a lot, and how they made the evenings go by.












I love my house decorations. We don't have a lot of them because I have gotten rid of many that didn't mean much to me so I could slowly acquire ones that I really like.


I got these candy canes for 49 cents each at Real Deals and they are quickly becoming one of my favorite things.
All of our stockings were made by my mother in law. I love them and would take them over store bought stockings any day.
I totally stole this idea from Erin because I love it. I had an old window and didn't know what to do with it so I ended up putting it on the shelf in the bathroom and used my old stocking, that was knitted by my great aunt when I was a baby.







And finally we have our tree. When we got the ornaments on it started looking a little lopsided but that's OK. It's our and we love it.


















This weekend we also managed to squeeze in a trip to the Botanical Gardens for Winter Garden aGlow with all the Smiths. If you haven't been it is something that you should do at least once. Everything that is sitting still is covered with lights. Everything.

This is only a small section of the gardens.



































Saturday we had our annual Reed family shopping day. Unfortunately Grandma Reed was sick so she couldn't make it but we did have Tina, Stacia, Laura, Stephanie, Terry, Steph and me. We started like we do every year at Cracker Barrel then went to several more stores together. I found Em a bed in a bag at Bed Bath and Beyond that was marked down from $179.99 to $99 because it was 'dirty', although I didn't see anything wrong with it and then they let me use a 20% coupon on it too so I got the whole thing for $80. So happy! It was not something I planned on buying but I was glad I found it.

To end the weekend we had our church Christmas party. Last year was the first year Rob and I went and we had a blast. This year was no different. We had a great table and a lot of laughs. Last year we won the table trivia game and this year we tied with three other tables. We'll see if we can go for a three-peat next year :o) So that is what is going on with us lately. Busy but trying to enjoy the season. To add to all that is going on I am also trying to do a December daily album. It's coming along slowly. Very slowly. But my hope is it will be done before 2008 is over.