our first Christmas tree

Last week, Lauren and I put up our first Christmas tree! As you can see from the picture below, it isn't a big tree. This year we are not going to be that long for vacation so that is why we decided to put one up. Our cat has been nosey enough to get into the tree, drink the water, and knock down ornaments about every 10 minutes. We had fun putting up our tree though. We made hot chocolate, put on Christmas music and unwrapped all the ornaments. It was a fun night...

this is the final version of our tree with lights and ornaments up, it's small but makes it feel like Christmas 

this is a picture of Luke putting up some ornaments... 

this is Lauren putting up some ornaments on our tiny tree... 

this is our Christmas tree that we got this year! It is so small and as you can see, our cat loves getting into it! 

Pictures with Santa...

A few weekends ago, our family (now 9!) went to the mall to get our Christmas picture. My mom decided that a picture with Santa would be the best idea. All nine of us sat around the chair and crammed in there. It quite an interesting event! Afterwards, we were all there in the mall celebrating Aubrey's 21st birthday. It was a great time as it is rare these days to have all nine of us together at the same time.

here is the final version of the Christmas picture we took at the mall... 

here is another pic of the 4 women in our family now!! 

this is all the guys here after we had our picture taken with Santa... 

this is a pic of the three girls in our family now...the men are soon going to be out numbered!