Oh Christmas Tree...

  This year we decided to save a little money on our Christmas tree so we skipped going to the Christmas tree farm.  The atmosphere of that place is indeed fun.  The hunt for that perfect tree, the hot cocoa, wagon rides, we really did enjoy all that.  However we usually spend a small fortune on a tree.  

This year we headed into town and hit up Menards.  There we found lots of nice trees.  We couldn't agree on a tree so we did something completely out of the ordinary and we picked out a mystery tree.  We called it that because we picked a tree that was still all wrapped up in netting.  We had no idea what it was going to look like once we opened it up.

Here is the tree when Daddy first cut off the twine.

We waited till the next night to decorate the tree and by then it was absolutely perfect!  We couldn't of picked out a better tree!  

It's always fun watching the kids go through their boxes of ornaments.  I have fond memories of doing that as a child.  I still love to look through my box of ornaments and reminisce about particular ones.  The kids are getting their own collections and building their own memories about certain ornaments.  

Once all the decorations were up it was time for the star.  Emily got to place the star on the top of the tree this year.  Daddy had to help a little.

 Some how we managed to get a good family photo.  It only took us 3 takes.  Of course it took a little while to figure out how to do the automatic timer, but once we figured that out it was smooth sailing.  Everyone cooperated.  Yay for us!