Phew – it’s been crazy around here this week! Brady has a double ear infection and hasn’t been sleeping well at all (translation: neither have mommy or daddy!) I’m finally getting around to posting our pictures from last weekend’s many Christmas events!

On Saturday, we went to our "usual” tree stop run by a local boy-scout troop. Of the 5 Christmas trees that have graced the living room of the 554, only 1 was not from this lot. Strangely, it took a lot to get the boys out of the house…here they wander around looking for the perfect pine. We ended up giving Logan the rights to choose. To this day, he keeps saying “wow – I picked a great tree!”

That same afternoon, we joined our neighborhood friends on the “Holiday Express” run by the local Park District. It’s so stinkin’ cute! Here, Aiden, Maddie and Logan share a seat on the trolley “to the North Pole”

We had the same wonderful guide as last year. She reads The Polar Express and gets everyone involved making noises along with various parts of the book.

Brady goofin around

Daddy and mini-daddy

Here we are at the North Pole! There is a tent where you can visit Santa and another “building” where you can get hot cocoa, coffee and cookies.

There were even a couple reindeer at the North Pole.

Decked out for the first time in FULL snow gear, the kids all took this opportunity to make their first snow angels of the season.

While waiting in line to see Santa, Logan explains to Mrs. Claus about our upcoming trip to Oklahoma. “Ya…my mom wrote a letter to Santa to let him know we’re not at home this year”. Mrs. Claus winked at me and claimed that it was a very good thing mom wrote a note!

Sweet winter hat daddy! (I must admit that I bought that for him last Christmas…winter is not about beauty!)

I couldn’t believe that all three boys hopped right on to Santa’s lap for a picture!

Our tickets. I like to take pictures of things like this so I can toss them and not have a bunch of papers in the house. At least this way, they’ll make it into our annual album (reminder to self: make blog into annual album!)

On Sunday night, we finally decorated the tree! Since we have a live one, Brian wanted to wait so that it was only up for a few weeks and doesn’t become a fire hazard (reminder to self: water the tree)

Hey look – toys!

Aiden and Logan hold up their favorite ornaments. Aiden’s is a blue striped candy which is hard to see because of the flash. Logan’s is a Santa in a car…which is hard to see because of his hand.

Before I had kids, my Christmas trees had a very definite theme…certain colors for the ornaments…ribbons…white lights…maybe baby’s breath in between the boughs like mom used to do. Now we use the colored lights, because the boys love them, and all the ornaments we’ve collected over the years. Just as beautiful as my very planned-out trees of the past…even if most of the ornaments seem to get placed on one side of the tree…at child height

…speaking of ornament placement…

Here are a couple of the kids’ very special ornaments. GG and GGpa send them one each year. The 1 is Brady’s from last year, the 3 is Aiden’s from this year. I’ve made a little bin for each boy which houses their very own collection…seems like a very “mom” thing to do as Brian and I both have boxes, handed down from our mothers, that contain our childhood ornaments (reminder to self: keep up the mom charade…bake some homemade chocolate chip cookies before you simply eat the chips straight out of the bag!)

The most treasured thing about our tree is the very cool train that we got a couple years ago. All the kids love running it, putting various things in the cars and making steam (when we remember to put in the liquid). Please note that we do have a tree skirt…it just wasn’t on when I took all these pics :)