We spent Thanksgiving in Preston this year, with a huge, yummy dinner hosted by my grandparents. (Too busy stuffing my face to take pictures, I guess!) Grace's 12th birthday fell the day after Thanksgiving and there was much celebrating to be done... more on that later. First we had to make our annual trek to the mountains to find the perfect Christmas tree.
The birthday girl herself.
Excited boys loading up the four-wheelers.
At Birch Creek.
It just doesn't feel right until someone gets stuck. I think this time was caused by a small Ratchford boy who shall go unnamed standing in the road and making the truck lose momentum.
The weather was not great; strong, cold wind and snowing off and on. Having five cold kids really lowered our standards tree-wise. We pretty much just chopped down the first one we saw.
Doesn't look too bad here.
But, oh, when we got home and brought it in!
I don't know if these photos do it justice, but this is the worst tree we've ever had! It was so ugly that I felt the need to explain it to everybody who stepped foot in our house. The bottom branches were thick and bushy, which should have meant that we could hang lots of ornaments on them, except that we now have a rambunctious two-year-old in the house. The upper branches were thin and skimpy and all sloped down, so no ornaments could be hung there either. So we pretty much had about ten ornaments on the whole tree. Plus with five kids and a big dog, the lights were constantly getting knocked off. It was just not a pretty sight. We will always lovingly remember 2011 as the year of the Charlie Brown tree, and I guess we loved it just the same.
Here she is after Christmas morning:
Poor girl. Usually I wait until after New Years to take down the tree, and it always makes me emotional. Not this year. It's just two days after Christmas and she's already gone. RIP.
1 comments:
Love the tree. It is quite hilarious. Wish we could have been closer to come see Grace in her debut performance.
Post a Comment