Nicholas was born November 21 and Thanksgiving was five days later so I wasn't sure I'd be up to shopping on Black Friday, but turns out I was, and since mom was in town to help with the kids, we left them with her and Patrick and I did some Christmas shopping. After we hit the mall we decided it was a great day to get the Christmas tree because we didn't have to worry about dragging both kids out in the cold. We ended up at this quaint little tree farm out in the country where we cut down our own tree. Okay not really. We actually went to Lowes because it was convenient and they had lots of pretty trees at awesome prices. Maybe we'll try the tree farm next year when we don't have a 6-day-old baby.
Lauren was WAY excited when we brought the tree home strapped to the top of the car. She and puppy watched from the front door as Dadda got it ready to bring inside.
After we got the tree up Patrick got all of the decorations out of the attic and I sorted through them to decide what made the cut this year.
Patrick and Lauren set the deer up in the yard and tried to figure out why the "Lauren deer" wasn't moving.
Puppy was excited to see his Christmas toys...
And Nicholas didn't help decorate AT ALL...
The day after Thanksgiving was also the day of the Alabama/Auburn game so at halftime I got the mantle decorated.
Then over the next few days we finally got the Christmas tree decorated.
And here is our exterior illumination...
I decided to do a combo birth announcement and Christmas card this year since Nicholas was born so close to the timeframe of sending out Christmas cards. However, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to get photos for it. This was the card we sent out...
But what you don't know is that middle picture took 85 attempts to get just right. Yep, that's 84 out-takes that didn't turn out. I wanted Lil' Jon on the card too, but we couldn't get a good one of him with the kids in time for the cards to go to print. However, later in the month I snapped this shot of pupper by the tree.
Since I was off work I decided to spend some time with Lauren doing fun arts and crafts projects. Here is her handprint wreath.
We also built a gingerbread house. I had never made one before so I thought it would be fun. What I didn't know was how quickly the icing would dry and how frustrating it would be to build one with a 2-year-old. Here is our gingerbread house construction lot -- all ready to build.
And here is Lauren -- all ready to eat the ingredients, I mean decorate it.
She was very careful about where she placed the gumdrops and silly me bought the big house because I thought we needed it. Next year we'll go with the smaller model.
Whoops! Got some on my hand...
No problem...we'll take care of that...please don't call the health department.
After about two hours and two pounds of candy later, we were done with our confection creation...
Okay, so we spent too much time on the roof and we got lazy on the sides. It was a BIG house. Lauren was very proud of the "candy house" and she kept asking when we could eat it.
That about sums up our holidays at home in Columbus. I'll post Christmas Eve and day photos later along with New Year's Eve.
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