Saturday January 9, 2010 - We had such a great Christmas season this year from start to finish. I can't possibly post every picture that I took because I would never get anything else done. But I will do my best to post the best pictures and the highlights from December.

The season began with our family tradition of cutting down our Christmas tree at the High Star Christmas tree farm. Every year since Mike and I were married we have cut down a fresh tree. The last two years, Butch and Wendy have brought their family along to enjoy the day with us. This year was cold, rainy and muddy but the kids have so much fun no one even seems to notice what the weather is doing.

Here is a picture of each of the kids "helping Daddy" cut down the tree:

Even Corey and Casey (and Uncle Butch) got in on the cutting action:

The tree gets loaded onto a wagon and they haul it (and us) up to the front to the tree shaker where they shake all the dead needles off and wrap the tree in the netting. I took a few pictures as we were waiting for our tree.

Next was putting up the tree and decorating it. I won't go into the problems we had finding a Christmas tree stand, but let's just say it finally got put up after many nights of sitting in a broken stand in the kitchen. Pictures of that wouldn't be interesting but I just wanted to document it for future reference. :)

Also, I learned I'm not very patient when it comes to letting my kids put ornaments on the tree. And it's not that they wanted to put every ornament on the same branch. I'm not anal about them being spread out evenly and filling every space on the tree. It was more of the one after the other, hooking ornament after ornament and not being able to keep up with how fast they wanted to put them up. I have two big boxes of ornaments and we can't possibly put them ALL up every year. Luckily, there were no major breakages in the ornaments and Brooke was promised she could be the one to put the star on the top this year (I let Hunter take it down, but don't tell Brooke - our secret). :)

We took the kids to have their picture taken with Santa at Willowbrook Mall. This is actually the first time in my children's life that I have been with them to sit with Santa. Don't ask me why - just has never worked out. Anyway, the picture turned out really great!!

So the anticipation of Christmas Eve finally arrived. All the gifts were wrapped and under the tree. It turned out that it wasn't even a late night as I had spent most of the week staying up a little bit each night wrapping. I couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces as the sun arose and brought them downstairs to see if Santa paid them each a visit...

Cute picture of them first thing Christmas morning:

I'm surprised at how few pictures I took Christmas morning. I remember in years past thinking "Did I really need to take a picture of them opening EACH gift?" I must have had that in mind this year because I know I had the video camera rolling more often this time. Brooke was starting to come down with something, so she was really subdued. She's usually the one who gets excited and she was just showing no emotion (turns out she had a major sinus infection with double ear infections - we had to take her to the doctor that Sunday to try and get her better. Poor baby was miserable!)

And the after math:

Next was Christmas Day and the day after at Grandma and Grandpa's Hebert's house for more gifts and more celebrating with Uncle Greg and Aunt Michelle and their family:

Every year we take a picture of all the grandkids together at my parents house. From left to right in the back is Cody (Dana's boyfriends son), Austin, Devin, Courtney, Jessie (all my brother Greg's kids and step kids) and then Brooke, Stone and Hunter in the front.

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