O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

After Breakfast with Santa on Saturday morning, we drove about 20 minutes north to Cackler Farms in Delaware to cut down our Christmas tree.  This was our 3rd year going here and I think we totally hit the jackpot with our tree.  Typically, we have a hard time finding taller trees that are full (we usually end up with tall & skinny) but one of the workers told us about one section of the tree farm to check out and there were a TON of great trees and hardly anyone was over in that area.  It only took us about 15 or 20 minutes to find our tree but another 30+ minutes to attempt a family picture and to cut it down.  I felt bad for Todd, this thing was huge and heavy (11.5 feet!)--he was sweating and breathing pretty heavy dragging it back to our car.  We were cracking up because other people had much smaller trees and could practically throw their trees over their shoulder and leisurely walk back.

We set up the tree once we got home and Todd strung the lights that evening.  On Sunday afternoon, we spent about an hour decorating it.  Lucy was actually a great helper this year, despite the fact she put most of the ornaments in a small section at the bottom, and I was proud of myself for not moving any of them.  Cece, on the other hand, was excellent at taking the ornaments off as soon as we would put one on.  We have bets on how long it'll take before she pulls the tree over (just kidding...we have 40 pounds of weight plates holding the tree down just for that reason).  Since we have the vaulted ceiling in our family room where our tree is and the balcony that overlooks the room, I love when I come out of our bedroom in the morning and can immediately smell that fresh Christmas tree scent.

Todd pulling Lucy in the sled 

She kept calling him a reindeer!

We eventually took Cece out of the stroller and put her in the sled too

My two girls

A bit overexposed (it was super sunny on Saturday) but our best attempt at a family picture with our tree using the timer & setting the camera up on the stroller

Selfie

Cutting down our beauty of a tree

All cut & ready to drag back to the car

Just like the Griswold's in Christmas Vacation

Another view

Taking the netting off once we got home

All lit up but not decorated yet

Lucy hung the first ornament

Cece just wanted to take them all out of the boxes

Don't mind me, Mommy, I'm not getting into anything

She was so excited about the Elmo ornament

Hanging up more ornaments

I helped too!

Todd was in charge of putting up the smaller ornaments on the top

Cece wanted to climb the ladder to help too

Adding the star to the top!

Decorated & ready for Santa's arrival