Oh Christmas Tree!

I feel like I'm completely skipping over Thanksgiving this year. It's not an unintentional slight, I just didn't photograph any of it this year. It was wonderful though. We got to celebrate twice! Once with the other first year residents and once with my brother and his family and one of the residents. Both dinners were delicious (Justin made the turkeys for both dinners and if you've never tasted his turkey, you're missing out). We had family, good friends, good fun, and tons to be thankful for. I feel as though I may explode at any moment, but it's not stopping me from picking at the leftovers!

Anyway, now it's on to Christmas! I am insanely excited today because we went to a tree lot this afternoon and got A REAL TREE!!! We haven't had a real Christmas tree in 4 years! We had a fake one in Vermont and that suited us fine but Justin and I both agreed that as soon as we were done with medical school we were going to be done with fake tree-dom. What we'd really wanted to do was go cut a tree down, but because of Justin's schedule, today was our only day for a week to get a tree as a family. Since I didn't want to wait any longer we went today. The place I'd found online did have a place you could go to cut them down yourself, but once we got there we learned that you could only go cut your own on weekends (boo). So we decided to peruse the lot and just get a precut one. We decided that next year we'll have to find a place to actually cut one.

The kids were so thrilled at the thought of getting a real tree. Clayton kept making comparisons between a real tree and our fake one. We all decided that the real tree won by a landslide!
On the way to get the tree.

Once we got there, we were immediately struck by how cold it was. It looked gorgeous outside, but looks were deceiving. As soon as we realized how cold it was, Justin and I immediately went into speed tree-hunting mode. At first the kids didn't seem to mind, but that changed quickly. We scouted out the lot, found the kinds of trees we were looking for, and picked out a lovely 7.5 ft. tall tree. I love it so much!


As we were paying for our tree, we realized that Santa was making an appearance at the tree lot! The boys were ecstatic!
Clayton wasted no time running down the list of things he wanted for Christmas. He's definitely got a handle on what Santa is all about!
Noah is still pretty awed by Santa. He mostly just sat on his lap staring at him and saying, 'Um...'. It was really cute!
I tried to get Josie to sit on Santa's lap, but she was terrified. She got a death grip on me and started whimpering as soon as we got close to him. So far she seems to be my only child who has been terrified of Santa.
All in all, we were only at the tree farm for about 40 minutes. They were a cold 40 minutes, but totally worth it!
Poor Jo! By the time we were ready to leave she was frozen. As cold as she was though, she refused to let go of her candy cane (she might have been terrified of Santa, but my baby's no fool - she still wanted that candy)! That darn candy cane though. By the time we got home, it was all over her hair. Grrr.
The tree is now set up in my family room and I couldn't be happier. The whole room smells so wonderful. It's definitely putting me in the Christmas mood! It's been so long since we've had this smell in my house that I just can't get enough. Plus, tomorrow we decorate! Yay! Merry Christmas!