Preparing for Christmas.....

As promised, here are some pictures as we prepare for Christmas - my favorite time of the year! We'll start with that always fun tradition of finding a Christmas tree. As much as I wanted to wander out into the middle of nowhere (National Lampoons Christmas Vacation style), with two young children, it's wasn't very plausible. So, we decided instead to go to Stibbitz Farm, right down the road. We were going to get a Frasier Fir this year, but decided instead to go with a basic Scotch Pine because we like the contrast of the dark green with the white lights that we use. The kids were really exicited to pick out a tree.

Although it was really snowy, the trees were SO PRETTY on the lot!

We had to leave the tree in the garage overnight to defrost, and when we brought it in, a mouse decided to come into the house with it!!

 Here is the tree before:

And after:

And all lit up:

The boys taking a break from decorating:

I'll get some pictures of the kids under the tree soon, but I haven't gotten to that yet. Last night the weather cleared up enough for us to venture out of the house. We decided to take the boys to see Santa Claus at the Lakes Mall. We're used to going to Rivertown Crossings, but since we moved, we had to go somewhere closer to home. At Rivertown, you can use your own camera to take pictures with Santa... at the Lakes Mall we actually had to PAY for the pictures! But, the boys had a blast, so it was worth it.

And then the boys were SO excited, we needed to let them run off some energy at the play area  :)

Today  the big plan is to make cookies. I have the Gingerbread dough in the fridge, so we'll start on those. Lots of different cookies will still need to be made, but at least we can start with those. The kids are busy playing on the snow hill Rick made in the backyard with the plow. Gramma Sunshine brought the boys some new sleds this morning, so they're breaking those in.

Wintery Weather

I love living on the lakeshore. Easy access to the beaches in the summer and literally TONS of snow in the winter! The first significant "snow event" of the season went south of us, but the next one MORE than made up for it. Pictures of that later.

The White Lake Santa Parade was this weekend. I'm used to the Coopersville Santa Parade, which is at night, so it was a little weird heading to see the Christmas parade in the daylight! Not as many Christmas lights on the floats. It was COLD, but we were getting some big, fat snowflakes, so that was neat. Joshua was able to walk in the parade with his Cub Scout Troop.

Here's a picture of the boys getting ready to go:


Logan drinking cocoa in the truck:


His super cute snowsuit (think Ralphie's little brother from A Christmas Story!):


Logan and his daddy:


Here come the Cub Scouts:


Joshua is in the orange hat, looking over the banner:


Oh, back to the snow issue. Like I said, we missed the first storm, but the second system hit us dead on. Thank you, Lake Michigan - it was all Lake Effect. This is our backyard, on Sunday afternoon. It pretty much looked like this when we went to bed on Sunday night:


And this is what we woke up to on Monday:






To say the least, Rick spent most of the day plowing. Logan and I were getting a bit of cabin fever, so we decided to go outside before lunch.











I love living in the woods too. Especially the pine woods. I cannot appropriately describe how pretty they are. G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S doesn't even do them justice. I'm amazed at God's creation.









Here's our little house in the wintertime:


We got our Christmas tree tonight. It's just a basic Scotch Pine. We were going to get a Frasier Fir, but decided we liked the dark green of the Scotch Pine as a contrast to the white lights that we like. We're supposed to get a MAJOR snowstorm tonight through Thursday (they're thinking maybe 10+ inches including the additional Lake Effect), and we're supposed to have "blizzard conditions" thanks to the wind on Thursday. It's currently defrosting in the garage, but Rick is going to bring it in on one of his breaks (lol) from plowing tomorrow. If Josh has a snow day tomorrow, the kids and I might start decorating the tree. I've got some of the presents wrapped, and it would be fun to see them under the tree.

Pictures of that to come. Oh, and I'll let you know how much snow we end up getting!!