The Great Happy Little Fleet Christmas Extravaganza, Part 1

It was a wonderful day!  We all started out loaded up in the van...

...but then we realized that somebody should ride with Daddy in the big truck.  It was Tom's first ride, and he was pretty excited!

 Upon arrival, we were met with quite a surprise, and not a good one.  Our favorite place to go to get our tree had moved...down the road...because some zoning situation had shut down their old place, including the beautiful old barn all decorated for Christmas and complete with the delicious lemon bars baked by the ladies down the road and the yummy apple cider.  Gone.  None of that.  We were kind of disappointed.

 And a little miserable.  Because it was wet.  Very wet and very muddy.  We're pretty sure that there hasn't been this much rain on one of our tree-cutting-down adventures before, and this tradition dates back to our first Christmas as a married couple.  Beth was cold and wet, so we went in the little trailer to get warmed up a bit before doing what we only do in inclement weather---settling on a pre-cut tree.

With renewed vision and an attitude of "This is all part of the adventure!" we headed out to find the perfect (pre-cut) tree. 

All Neil wants for Christmas is his two front teeth!

 Tom wouldn't have survived if Kara hadn't carried him.  He enjoyed his first Christmas tree hunt about as much as...I can't think of much he has enjoyed quite as little, actually.

 Tang and Bridget posed with the Christmas tree that they and Kara picked for their house...

 This is how Neil smiles most of the time these days.  We rarely see the hole where his baby teeth once were.

Most of our pictures have raindrops on the camera like this one.  It was wet, but by the end, there were smiles...and a beautiful tree!