Christmas Tree Cutting 2013

Dave's co-worker, Donatella, and her husband, Paolo, and daughter, Anna, came Christmas tree cutting with us.  They are Italian and wanted to experience cutting down their own Christmas tree.

We knew the roads would be bad, so we borrowed their other 4wd vehicle and left early in the morning for our cutting spot, west of Santa Fe.

We found trees fairly quickly, since we needed to head back to Santa Fe before the roads thawed.  We had a lot of rain this fall and the roads were torn up by people four wheeling on them. 

Our tree..

 

 

 Jack and Anna

 Nick took a little nap in the backpack while we walked around.

  The kids had fun playing with Anna

Ready to four wheel back to the paved roads.  We couldn't have made it in our van.  By 10:00 the roads were sloppy and muddy. 

Donatello and Paolo have been very sweet to us.  Last year right before Nick was born, they had us over for dinner at their home in Santa Fe.  They made homemade pasta and sauce, pork in a cream sauce, bread and salami (Jack's favorite) and Italian carrot cake.  It was delicious!  They gave us a really nice Bugaboo Bee stroller ($600 new) and after Thanksgiving we came home with a new car seat for Nick. 

Decorating the tree

Our tree this year is definitely the biggest one we've had.  It's about 7 or 8 feet tall.  The kids got to stand on chairs to decorate it.

Christmas Tree Hunting 2012

My parents and little sister came to for Thanksgiving.  We didn't do anything super exciting, but I enjoyed having them around.  Dave and my dad finished installing the rest of the kitchen cupboards, so now the kitchen stuff is in the kitchen instead of the hall closet.  And the hall closet stuff is back where it goes instead of being in my closet.  

My mom and I cooked up a storm and made Thanksgiving dinner.  Karen, Brad and Brendon came up from Albuquerque for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a good day...lots of yummy food too!

The boys were constantly with Grandpa.  They made several trips to the middle school football field to kick field goals together.  

The day after Thanksgiving we drove over east of Santa Fe to cut down a Christmas tree.  After a little looking we found one.

 Ty enjoyed playing in the dirt.

 Jack brought his tape measure along.  He even measured the needles for us.

 Grandpa held up the tree while Dave cut it down.

 

 And the boys found sticks (guns and canes) to play with.

After we found our tree, my parents brought Kate and Jack home with them while Dave and I (and Ty) did a little Christmas shopping.  Then that evening the adults went to dinner and left the kids home alone. :)

Christmas Tree Hunting 2011

We went Christmas tree hunting the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We didn't go the day after Thanksgiving because it was raining and foggy.  The Nye family came with us.

We couldn't go tree hunting where we've gone in the past, near Abiquiu, because the fire, so we went to the Caja Del Rio area west of Santa Fe.  We were worried that we wouldn't be able to find a tree, since there were tons of junipers and not very many pinions.  We finally found an area with a few nice trees.  We can't be as picky with our trees in New Mexico.

We went pretty early in the morning and it was cold and windy!

Kate, Annika, Craig, Jack, Ty, Ashley

  This is the Nye's tree...

The kids were warming up in the van when Dave and I cut down our tree.  I left the camera in the van, so we don't have any pictures of the cutting process.  And I didn't take any pictures of the kids decorating the tree either.  We set up Jack's electric train around the train.