Getting ready for Christmas

Here are a few photos of the events leading up to Christmas. The first one is our family portrait with Santa. There was NO WAY Kate (right) and Lily were going up there without us. We went to see him at the zoo. I was thinking this would be the least scary since the girls are so comfortable at the zoo. It didn't really matter after all.














Happy to be away from the hairy red monster, the girls enjoyed the rest of the morning at the zoo with Mommy and Daddy both there! Lily has on the glasses (yeah!).

We left the house one day to look at artificial Christmas trees and ended up at a tree farm where we chose a POTTED Christmas tree! What were we thinking?! 2 physical therapy sessions later (I threw out my back getting it out of the car)... we had a beautiful tree that now is planted in our yard. I'm trying not to get too attached to it...we don't have a great track record for keeping plants alive, much less a tree. But I wanted the girls to be able to keep their tree from the first Christmas that I think they will remember.
Lily and Mommy on the wagon ride to pick out the tree:














Daddy and Kate:














We got to see a live reindeer at the tree farm.














Lily (right) and Kate's first hot chocolate!














One of our Christmas highlights....the Gardendale Christmas parade with Jonah, Ella and Emma!














Lisa serves up the hot chocolate.














Grammie provides a tasty Christmas craft with the Eddins gang!