Magic

Yesterday was magical.  It started out like a normal Monday with the usual morning rush to school.  Then, the normal pickup of the whole house after a weekend of leaving everything out.  I picked up the boys early from school because we had a photo session with KC.  I was really excited for this because we have never had our pictures professionally done.  Ok, so that is kind of a lie.  We've had a photographer at our wedding and we had a few mall portraits done of the boys when they were little, and we had our good friend take some of us for a Christmas card one year, but never outdoor family portraits by a professional!!!

We headed up to a tree farm and I threatened the boys with a slow death if they didn't cooperate for the pictures.  It must have been that, or when Tim doubled down on the threat with, "Mom wants these pictures to turn out well, and you know you want to make her happy right?," because they were perfect angels.  Okay, well, we did have to keep reminding them that we didn't want all the pictures with goofy faces in them.

Jack seemed to be in his element during the photo shoot.  At one point KC told us to walk slowly toward the camera but Jack decided to make it sloooooooow motion walking.  I'm not sure how those ones turned out.  I'm hoping the humor translates in the pictures.  Another time, both the boys had their hands on their knees and she told them to switch up their hands a bit.  Jack smirked and literally switched his hand on the opposite knees.  Not quite the pose she was going for.

Even though it was chilly, it was a beautiful day and the trees were glistening.  Since we were already at the tree farm we decided to chop one down to take home.  Noble firs are our favorite kind but we were disappointed to find out that they don't grow on the East side of the mountains.  I'm not sure what kind we got but it kind of looks like a noble, with a bit wimpier branches.

After warming up, eating dinner out and getting some big retro lights for the tree, we headed home to decorate.  We popped on a Christmas record and filled the house with stuff I'm going to hate dusting in a few weeks.  For now though, I love it.  We managed to get every single ornament on the tree.  Barely.  In Jack's words, "That tree is strugglin'."  We've had to straighten the tree a few times, but it hasn't fallen down yet!!  I will count it as a success, if we only have to pick the tree off the floor one time.  Christmas is always a little wonky and crazy and magical.  It's fitting that our tree is all of those things.

Just when it was time for bed, Jack insisted that we practice for Christmas morning.  He wanted us to all go and pretend to be asleep in our beds so he could wake us all up.  I told him that we could just pretend to be asleep on the couch downstairs, but noooo, it had to be realistic.  So at the pretend 4am wake up time (that's our rule for Christmas morning), Jack shook Luke awake then he came in to let us know that it was time to open presents.  We all ran downstairs giggling and saw our masterpiece of a tree.  It was a great Christmas morning by the way.  Jack was satisfied and went off to bed, probably dreaming of Christmas morning.

See, I told you, magical.