Hello each of you & very good morning! Elise & I have of course been quite busy preparing for the Christmas holidays. One of the first things that we do every year is to display our big number of nutcrackers around the first floor of house, with most of them displayed in our dining room. For our Christmas tree, our whole family drove out to the Christmas Tree Farm which is near North Bend, and our driving trip to their location was about 40 miles east of our house. This farm has always been our favorite place to find our Christmas tree when we are all able to make a slightly long drive work well with all our schedules. This task has been a little bit more challenging over the last few years given that our three daughters have gotten a bit older with the opportunity of going to college. It was great that this year all three of our daughters, along with one their friends, all went to this farm. We ended up selecting a beautiful Noble Fir tree. As part of the Christmas Tree Park’s Tree selection process, we measured the height of the tree that we will need for our house, & it seemed fine to us. It is ironic that this year’s Christmas tree ended up having a slightly long top, so it sticks out a little bit on our living room ceiling, but Elise & our daughters love the way it looks.  Versus a normally sized Christmas tree that we use every year, but this year we now have a fabulous new tree that also has some longer branches on it in many places that are slightly covering some ornaments as well!

One special activity that we have enjoyed doing each year is that my family goes to a very special great event where all the attendants are encouraged to build a small-sized gingerbread house!  Of course, all the kids, no matter how old they are, love to enjoy doing this activity, and all the groups are organized with the intent of having total families sitting with each other together. The way that the organizers achieved this is via having some wonderful pictures sitting on a different table in a big room. These pictures made their parents so happy to see those old pictures of their children when they participated in this activity on any prior years. In our case, the pictures of our three daughters were from a few years ago, which made Elise & I so happy to see those old pictures, for sure!