Welcome, Christmas !

Well hello there, December !

Thanksgiving made its scrumptious appearance last week, and we are all a few pounds plumper as a result.

We spent a lovely four days with my mom, sister, nieces and cousin, catching up on life, eating, shopping, gingerbread decorating and geocaching. They flew in from Arizona Wednesday and left on Sunday morning, and I miss them so much already... so thankful to have had the time with them, even though saying goodbye was hard. I spent most of the holiday soaking up time with my family, rather than taking pictures but did manage to snap a few (and steal one from Mackenzie to make up for my lack ;))

pictured with my kids: my mom, my sister hope, my niece Brittany and my sister's foster baby Charlie, and my nieces Jade and Grace

Jack and Jade

my niece Grace. cutest laugh in the world!!

^^My hard working oldest son, Jason ...going to nursing school and working full time at the hospital and catching sleep when he can !!

.... and the beautiful people : Mackenzie and my niece Brittany . xoox

So today we headed over the river and through the woods to chop down our Christmas tree.

Okay, actually we drove across town to the Boy Scouts' Christmas tree farm, because they didn't have any trees big enough for us at the lot. We scored a massive thirteen footer for $2.50 a foot. Hellooooo, Oregon. (Back when we lived in Arizona you couldn't touch a tree for that price. Perks of living in Christmas tree country !!)

The nice Scout leader who offered to meet us out at the farm whipped out his handy chain saw, and after whacking that tree down in less than ten seconds, Caleb yelled, "WRONG TREE !" I could say something punny here, like "the pinecone doesn't fall far from the tree", but I'm not cheesy like that. Ha.

I will say that we had quite a time lugging that bad boy across the field to our van... and an equally difficult time getting it onto the roof of the van ... and even though I contributed nothing to all this hard work, I declared a trip to New York Bagels a necessary reward for all of Sam and Caleb's hard work.

Actually, Sam declared it a necessity, I just yelled Amen.

Tyler behind the counter... hint: he's not the one with the beret

do you have any candy flavored bagels ??

Tyler works at a local Chinese restaurant, but he recently landed a part time job at New York Bagels as well. Sam does their credit card processing, and he never misses an opportunity to score points with his clients by purchasing their products... I don't want to name names, but we may have an excellent actor to play the part of Santa in our upcoming church Holiday Family Fun Day if someone keeps this habit up. Ho ho ho :)

Lily approves of her brother's service

me and my girl. well, one of them .

Caleb sharing nicely.

Sam and his midlife crisis hat. That's what I call it anyway ;)

Jack and Noah picked jalapeno bagels. My kinda guys .

So as luck would have it, the credit card processing machine went down just as we were there. Sam went behind the counter to fix things, and the natives quickly became restless. It was all that gluten, I tell ya. Mwuahahahahhaa.

Fortunately for us, there was this looooong hallway behind the bagel shop with lots of room to run and dance in, and lots of cool walls to take pictures in front of. I'm quite sure someone built that place for such a time as this.

Fifteen minutes later Sam had things up and running again, and we all piled back into the van to make the long journey home.

Three minutes later we pulled into The Rice Ranch and began the arduous process of Setting Up The Tree.

Also known as Everybody Has An Opinion On How Straight A Tree Is .... but Mine's The Only One That Matters.

I forgot to mention a funny thing that happened at the Christmas tree farm while we were there.

Kenzie and the little kids and I were traipsing through the mud and pine needles back to the van, following Sam and Caleb as they marched tree-laden ahead of us. I took a big long sniff of the air and sighed. "I looooove the smell of pine trees," I said, smiling at Mackenzie. "Me toooooo !" she sighed as well. "Wish we could somehow bring that home with us."

What can I say.

#blondandhomeschooled.

Here I am Christma-fying every bless-ed thing I can at The Rice Ranch.

And here is Hayden, undoing every bless-ed thing he can get his hands on. Yay.

Speaking of Christma-fying ... I'm hosting a Holiday Jamberry Party online through my friend Danielle. All the Rice ladies are HOOKED on Jamberry nails, including Lily. These nail wraps come in dozens of adorable patterns and colors, and one of my favorites is Candy Cane. I did my nails with them, and Lily's toenails too... with an accent nail from Abigail's set of Reindeer Jamberrys for her big toe. Swoon.