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Christmas Tree 2017

One of my favorite days of the year is Christmas Tree day. We prefer a real tree so we head out early in the morning to one of the local farms. For the the last several years we’ve been going to Abbey Farms; it is by far the best place we’ve found in the Chicagoland area. Jeremy grew up in upstate New York so he has lots of quintessential memories of Christmas tree hunting. He was pretty bummed this year that their was no snow for our hunt - it was in 50’s! The kiddos and I, however, enjoyed the sunny weather.
BabyZ is at such a fun age! His little mind is like a sponge. It’s such a joy to watch him observe and try to figure things out. He was so engaged all day - that night he had one of his best sleeps yet!
 
The older boys wanted to try and cut the tree down themselves, but still needed some assistance from Dad. I adore the picture above of Jer calmly coaching Big Buddy as BabyZ crawls all over him - he is such a patient wonderful dad! 

Jer didn’t have to help carry the tree this year. The older three kiddos did that all by themselves. This was the first year that Little Lady wanted to help carry. She did amazing! She would of taken it all they way back to car, but Mini Man wanted a turn too.

Jeremy even had help securing the tree to roof.
While the farm shakes and bales our tree, we head inside for complimentary donuts and hot chocolate. There is also a Santa the kids like to visit. We’ve never encouraged our children to believe in Santa, but Little Lady and Mini Man still think it is fun to chat with him. BabyZ wasn’t so sure, but he did finally give Santa a high-five.
Since the weather was so nice we wandered around the farm a little bit and enjoyed the scenery. My climbers had so much fun scaling and jumping off this fence.
↑ BabyZ dirty little bum 😂
Once we get the tree home Jeremy usually puts on the lights by himself; then we wait until it's dark to have a little tree decorating party. We always have eggnog and cookies. The kids also get a little gift to start the Christmas season. It’s a decoration that they will be able to take with them to their own homes someday. This year they also got some candy because the following day we had were headed to Iowa, and candy makes a 4-hour-car-ride much more fun.
Our tree is a little different every year. Some years we’ve done ribbons and some day we will actually get around to making a popcorn garland. We always follow an order when decorating though: lights, garland, balls, ornaments, and finally the star. The kids take turns putting up the star. I can never remember who’s turn it is; this was the FIRST year were nobody bickered about it - VICTORY!
I hope your holiday season has started off with lots of smiles and laughs. Blessings! 

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