Six Stechers: O, Christmas Tree

With or without a daddy recovering from pneumonia, we decided to get our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving...in the pouring rain...at a Home Depot with no roof in the garden area. It wasn't the brightest thing we've ever done. But, in our defense, we were all set to leave with five girls dressed and ready for a tree when we opened the front door and realized it was raining. We had to just push through at that point! On the bright side, we got a cute picture of four girls with their umbrellas :) Matt was busy picking the first tree we could lay our hands on. We weren't going to be picky in the pouring rain!

What entered our house a dripping mess transformed into a beautiful, decorated tree more than a few days later. (Someday, many years from now, we will get and decorate our tree in a timely manner. I'm not looking forward to those days since it will mean no little people interfering with our plans!)

With the arrival of our Christmas tree came the (slow) retrieval of all things Christmas from the crawlspace underneath the house. Out came Santa hats and Christmas toys,

and eventually a knock on our door...

Henry Jolly, our own little Elf on the Shelf, returned, with a letter!

And he brought the first toy of the season with him: some more Christmas Little People toys to add to the girls' growing collection!

There has been a lot of Santa talk around our house, and more than a few letters. I captured these two before the girls turned theirs in for a school wide mail-off to Santa.

Once all of our ornaments were on the tree, I realized that we have a picture of all of the girls in front of our tree from each year since Megan was a baby. They're all in little ornament frames. But, we didn't have a 2012 one yet. So, we set about trying to get a good one. Of course, baths, blow-drying and Christmas jammies had to happen first! When everyone was ready, they were more than a little silly and not the most cooperative. These are the best we could do...each perfect in their own way!

After I caught these cute pictures of Mary giggling to herself, I wanted to get a photo of each girl by herself in front of the tree. But, while I was getting Annie, Tessa slid herself (and her little rocking chair) into the frame. Annie was not amused :)