christmas tree hunt

friday morning we headed out to cut down our christmas tree. we were so thankful my parents were happy to tag along to help carry and corral our chitlins. we had high hopes of driving north to nesbitts tree farm, but decided driving an hour each way was just not worth it this year. especially since there wasn’t even any snow! we headed to enzenauer’s evergreens again and found a great tree.

my mom happily carrying claire.

me and ellie. they were stunned because we yanked them from their cozy car seats where they were sleeping.

charlie loved the tree hunt this year. it is so fun to watch him get excited about some of our traditions.

charlie would point at a tree and say “probee buy dis one!”

bill and charlie inspecting one of the trees. you can barely see charlie here (just the tip of his hat), but it was so sweet how he would imitate whatever bill was doing.

bill with just the right tree. he had an unspoken goal to get the biggest tree ever this year and I think he succeeded (9.5 ft tall).

a quick family photo in front of the tree.

claire and g. pops. I totally didn’t even pack the girl’s gloves…whoops!

this is where things got really cute. bill laid on the ground to start cutting down the tree and charlie laid right behind him.

then charlie even started to “saw” his hand back and forth like bill. I had recorded the best video of charlie “sawing” his hand like bill and then he pushed the tree over by himself and was just delighted. it was awesome – until I mistakenly deleted it in the car on the way home. I cried –literally. I was so disappointed that I deleted that sweet video, but bill reminded me that I can remember it in my head like people did for generations. it sort of helped, but I was and am still really bummed. at least I have a few pictures of the events.

all pumped up after pushing over the tree by himself!

c-little following the guys while they carry out the tree.

whoops – he crashed!

charlie insisted on helping carry the tree – so he was in charge of carrying the tip.

intently watching the shaker and baler.

all the girls.

enjoying our hot chocolate, marshmallows and christmas cookies after cutting the perfect tree. a family tradition.

then, like last year, we found the tractor & farm equipment auction on the way home. since we are such a huge family now we had to take 2 cars tree hunting, which worked out perfectly since we could have charlie, bill and g. pops go to the tractor auction and my mom and I took the girls home for lunch. charlie had a blast checking out all of the farm equipment.

with g.pops inside a huge combine.

a classic.

do you think he had fun?

when the boys got home the tree made it’s way into our living room. bill – proud of how tall it is.

during naptime, we got the lights on and the majority of ornaments. when charlie got up from nap he was able to put up his ornament from last year (a tractor) and open his ornament for this year.

charlie opening his gift from this year…LIGHTNING MCQUEEN!!!!

this boy is just a bit obsessed with CARS (the movie) and all other cars.

ellie liked munching on the wrapping paper.

lightning on the tree.

eleanore and claire have ornaments coming, but they are still in the mail. the tree lasted about 3 minutes without the gate going up. so thankful for the gate this year!