What have we been up to??

I realize I'm getting kinda slack in updating my blog. Here's my Holiday Update...it's kinda long. :)

Last weekend, we went with my brother and sister-in-law and their cutie pie little boy up to Boone to pick out a tree. They are Isabel's godparents and we just love them. By the way, I told you that he's my brother and I feel the need to tell you that he's really not. Haha. I'm actually an only child and he doesn't even have a sister but we all went to college together in Boone (minus Brian) and people asked if we were brother and sister. We knew we looked alike and decided to just play along. Once we even fooled someone in Justin's family! It was great! Another time since college I ran into someone that knew him and she said, "Oh, you're Justin's sister right??" Haha! Even though we aren't "technically" related we still consider them our family. Besides, I always wanted a brother growing up. :)
See I told you we look alike.

We had a really fun day. We LOVE going to Boone. It brings back so many fun memories from college and it's just a cool place to hang out for the day since it's not that far from where we live. We went to the Circle C Tree farm and they have a hay ride that will pull you up the hill to where the trees are growing. You take a really tall pole with you to help measure the height of the tree you choose and a little paper with your name on it to tag your tree. At the top you hop or slide out of the hay ride and then choose which tree you want. This was really fun except that Isabel insisted on carrying the pole (do you see it in the picture?) that was pretty much equal to three of her. We are all lucky that no one's eye was poked out with that thing! It would swing around and then dip down close to someone. Anyway, we each picked out our trees and then the main came over with his chainsaw and sawed it down. After that we hopped back in the hay ride and rode back down the hill. At the barn there were a few animals that the kids could look at. They had some hot chocolate for us inside too. Apparently there was kettle corn too...but our friends, that we saw leaving, must have eaten the rest. :) After the tree farm we drove into town and walked around the Mast General Store and then had dinner at Macado's. Yum!

However, if you saw my facebook update, you'll know that we had a tree dilemma. At the tree farm, they drilled a hole into the bottom of the tree so it would fit on our stand at home. We didn't find out until we put it in the stand at home that they drilled it crooked so the whole thing leaned WAY to the side. Brian tried everything to fix it. He even went to get a new stand so he could just bolt it down. That stand ended with the tree landing on the piano and the bolts getting bent. Seriously. Thankfully Circle C Tree Farm reimbursed us! They were really nice about it. So, we went to get another tree from our normal tree lot, Sugar Creek Nursery. They always give great deals for beautiful trees. Now here's the cool thing about Tree #1. We chopped off the very tip top to make our own little Jesse Tree for Advent. We're doing the Jesse Tree Journey for Advent found here. And a friend is coming over either tomorrow or Tuesday to pick up a bunch of the extra limbs that she is using for a project. I'm so glad that Tree #1 did not go to waste. I felt bad about just chucking it, ya know? Here are some pictures of the ornaments that Isabel and I laminated, cut out, hole-punched, and tied a ribbon through. They're soo pretty.

Then last night we went to see the Nutcracker with Nana. We had been wanting to see it with it Isabel but weren't sure if she would be ready to go and patient to sit through it. Well, she started talking about it before we even mentioned it to her because she loves the music from it and the story. So, Nana told the ticket man on the phone that this would be Isa's first show. He said, "well, there are 4 seats right up front if you'd like!" So that's where we sat. We could actually look down and see all of the orchestra sitting there playing along. It was so fun!