Christmas Tree Shopping

One of my favourite times of the year is got to be Christmas time.  I LOVE Christmas!!!  Actually LOVE in an understatement but they haven't invented a word that describes how I feel about it.  
It conjures up those warm and fuzzy feelings.    I just love traditions too! I love creating new ones and carrying on old ones.   And I just pray that the traditions that we have begun as a family will long continue.  They are what connects us to not only family - past and present, but also to something much bigger than ourselves.  Christmas is a time for reflection. I could say quiet reflection but it so does not apply in my household!

To kick off the Christmas season in our family, is our annual Christmas tree shopping trip.
This is where we all pile into the car, drive to the Christmas tree farm, the same one we have been going to for years, weave in and out of all the hundreds of Christmas trees and trying to choose and agree on this years tree.  Not an easy task.

The kids take turns at carrying the measuring stick they give you and this year it was Sophie turn.  It was such a sight, a wee little sprite of a girl trying to carry a 2 metre long stick without taking anyone out along the way.  How precious!

Now not to loose any of the kids.

How about this one?

I think this is it!  What do you think?

Tiiiiiiiimbeeeeeer!!!!!!

Decorating the tree is NOT in the least like one of those sitcoms I used to watch as a kid, where the family all gathers round the tree, singing carols and drinking eggnog?? or hot cocoa and lovingly looking at each other.  But we do have fun and we all decorate it.  A lot of the decorations are child height and in between the arguements of who is going to put what where, there is a lot of laughing, a lot of "this looks pretty Mama!" and heaps of "can you reach up there?"

We all have our own decoration with our name on it, which adorns the tree and the years that I have been with-child we have put a blank matching decoration up, as the unborn child is already part of family.  I was a little sad that there was no blank one this year.

I love the end result of our tree.  It does not look like it belongs in a magazine - far from it!  But it is our tree, so carefully decorated with all the awe and wonder that goes with a five children. 

I love Christmas!

ps Just so you know, half an hour before we left to get our tree, the kids were fighting and yelling and I was grumpy and ready to cancel Christmas!