It’s January 8.  I know.  Forgive me.

The fam on Christmas morning:

Mom reading from Luke on Christmas Eve night: (at least we muted the TV)

Christmas decor:

Hadrian getting his rawhide candy-cane shaped bone Christmas morning:

Andrew and Odie:

What a great picture of our guy!

Josh’s new shoes: (this photo does not even come close to how bright they are in-person)

A photo sent from mom and dad when they got to Allison’s in PA after leaving NY:

 

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, an unbelievably Happy New Year and that things are going smoothly so far.  I’ve resolved to eat better (like everyone else on the planet), work out more (like everyone else on the planet) and stress less (again, like everyone else on the planet).  Which of course will mean that Andrew will lose weight and I’ll gain it…  Just kidding!

Just returned from my Ohio trip and took the morning off (there goes resolution two about working out more) to get my house and brain organized for the week.  I’ve already blogged for the co-op, sent a few emails and am about to either run or run errands…

 

The Layers x 2 and the Tatlows got their Christmas trees yesterday.

(It’s so weird calling Carolyn a ‘Tatlow.’)

We missed Abigail and sent her a play-by-play in pictures.

We all went together to a teeny, tiny tree farm run by someone who works with Andrew’s dad.  Andrew, bootless for the first day, kept up as well as he could.

Here are some snapshots (although not in order since WordPress updated their media upload function and they all imported themselves…):

Carolyn “catching” the Layer’s tree as it fell…

Carolyn, Andrew and myself, all sporting our Sorel winter boots (despite the clear lack of snow we’re experiencing…

Andrew, cutting down our tree…

Andrew’s mom and dad pulling while Ben cut down his and Carolyn’s tree…

me, dragging our tree…

more dragging…

switch hands, more dragging…

What was Andrew doing while I was dragging the tree?  Limping alongside with a tree branch, snapping these photos.

I love getting real trees for Christmas.  One of my first memories with Andrew’s family was going with them one year in college on the day after Thanksgiving to get their tree.  Growing up, we always had real trees, although I don’t know that we always cut our own.  It wasn’t until Andrew and I got our first apartment that we had to use a fake tree.  Artificial ones, especially the really nice ones, are certainly convenient, but lack the ‘magic’ a real tree brings to Christmas.  With our windowed porch, I could definitely see having an artificial one all lit-up with white lights in the future out there (I love Christmas lights and seeing trees through peoples’ windows), and then having our ‘real’ tree somewhere else in the house.

We’ll probably get the tree up tonight and then maybe plan a night this week to decorate it.  I have three giant tests in three days (and it isn’t even finals week yet!) starting tomorrow, so I’m not sure ‘tree-decorating’ tops the to-do list tonight…