10 on the 10th (and 11th)

Got a little busy and forgot about 10 on the 10th this month. But took pictures yesterday and today, so will cheat and use those.

10:00 am

11:00 a.m.

11:15 am

2:00 pm

5:00 pm

6:00 pm

7:00 pm

Trimming the Tree

Tonight we put on Bing Crosby and trimmed the tree. Iris was a pretty cute stocking stuffer,

and present under the tree,
but her attack on the tree itself has me worried for tonight, when she will probably decide the ornaments all need to be captured, eviscerated, beheaded, and brought to the master. We did take the most problematic ornaments from last year and put them on the mantel rather than the tree, but I doubt it will be enough to stop her.
Despite Iris's potential to wreak havoc on the finished product, we had fun deciding where to put our favorites. Adelaide chose the tree topper from the collection of stars. She is almost tall enough to put the star on top on her own!
I was glad I still needed to lift her up to put it on (and glad I still can).
Now we are fully in the Christmas spirit around here.

Tree Farm

Before the really heavy rain hit yesterday, we headed out to chop down a Christmas tree. Chop being a little heavy-handed, as it seemed like that saw slid right through the trunk like butter. A little easier going getting a small tree from a farm in Redmond than my childhood adventure tromping through waist-deep snow and felling what was the smallest tree on the land but the biggest one we'd ever tried to fit in our house.

The kids had fun (or at least I did) with the obligatory stick-your-face-in-the-hole photo shoot:

Breaking character:
The "chopping:"

Some hands-on help:
Carrying our treasure back to the car:

Happy with our selection:
Time to bake some cookies and dust off the Bing Crosby cd so we can decorate the tree!