Saturday, December 11, 2010

Getting Ready for Christmas

Winter has definitely come to stay here in Hot Springs. I calculated that we are getting almost 15 hours of darkness everyday! It's pitch black at 4:30pm and doesn't get light until 7am. It actually hasn't been that cold, although I do have to scrape ice off the windshield almost every morning as we are dashing to day care. Oh yeah, about day care...

...most of you already know this, but for those who don't: I have decided to go back to school to pursue a degree in Elementary Education. I have been going back and forth on this matter since I first graduated from UF. I finally decided that it's now or never, and we are in a good place to allow me to do this. My last day at the bank will be December 17, after which I will get to spend the holidays with the girls and Kevin and then give the house a good winter cleaning before classes start January 12. I'll be taking 3 classes to start, which I hope will be a good balance with watching the girls full time again. So wish me luck!

So this year we decided to go chop down our own Christmas tree, and we went and got a permit from the Forest Service and took a ride over to the Black Hills National Forest north of Custer. Despite the 19 degree temperatures, Kevin picked out the beauty of a tree below. My feet were freezing, but the girls didn't complain one bit. But I think the most fun they had was playing with a bit of rope that we were going to tie the tree to the roof with.





Here is our tree!





Linnaea puts the tree topper on.





Elise puts an ornament on.





Getting the tree chopped down and home was the easy part. A photo with the two of them smiling and looking the same direction was a challenge.





Our local Santa at the phone company. Again the challenge of getting them to look the same direction...





...maybe if we cut and splice the two photos we'll get a perfect one.