Christmas treats and lights

It has become a tradition for me to make peanut cluster at Christmas time. This year one evening it was just Tory and I at home we didn't really have much to do other than the usual loads of laundry, which I try to find every excuse in the book not to do. So making some treats and going to look at Christmas lights sounded like a good idea. After we got all the peanut clusters wrapped up we loaded into the car and went out on our little adventure.
Here are some of the beautiful lights that we saw....This house had all its light hooked up to a music box so that the lights would blink to the beat of the music.

Only in North Idaho would you see a blow up Santa riding a twinkle light decorated ATV. It made me smile though.

And last but certainly not least is our light extravaganza. This is Carl's pride and joy, it probably took him a total of 2 days , 2 melted extension cords, hundreds of twinkle lights, 4 reindeer, one prelit tree, 8 prelit twig branched and a new breaker( thanks to Carl's cousin Enoch) to put up all our lights. Thankfully he was able to get everything done before we got any snow. It sure looks amazing. He did a wonderful job, Tory and I are greatful to be able to have a beautiful festive house for Christmas.

The great search

Last year we start going out with Chrysta and Bryan to find our Christmas tree. They took us to this wonderful tree farm called Camden Ranch in Elk, Washington. This year Carl was able to come along (last year he was to sick to come) so it was even more exciting to get to be there as a family. We are so lucky to have such great friends who share wonderful things with us, Chrysta and Bryan always find great things like this tree farm. We got to ride up the hill from the house to go find the perfect tree. Chrysta and Bryan didn't have much trouble, Carl and I on the other hand had a hard time compromising. In the end we were able to find that one perfect tree for us though. It turned out wonderful. We enjoyed spending time with Chrysta and Bryan and are so greatful for their love and friendship.





What a great little helper we have. Even though we got a spruce, it didn't stop Tory from wanting to touch it and help with the lights. After we got the tree moved into our living room and in its place, Tory laid down on the ground to get a good look at the tree. She's so cute.

Baisden Look-alike Meter

I saw this on a blog this morning, and thought for sure I could prove Carl and everyone else wrong for thinking that Tory look like him. Of course even the look-alike meter thinks that she looks like her Daddy. Darn it. Oh well, I guess its not such a bad thing. It was fun to try and easy to do, you should try it too.
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Family Christmas

"This is a Christmas decoration", would be the first thing we heard out of my mom's mouth the moment we started to say something about the pre lit tree. I got a good kick out of it. She was so defencive about the tree. I thought it was a great idea. It looked very festive. My mom hosted our (Holly's family) Family Christmas get together this year. Since it was at the beginning of December she was afraid that if she got her tree before hand it would get to dry by the time Christmas rolled around. Anyways, we had a nice dinner with Grammy and Gramps, Uncle Scott, Aunt Tena, Ben, Krissi, Tyson, Riley, Ty, Meghan, Brieanna, Jadee, My Mom, Jimbob, Ian, Jen, Jordan, Hunter, Kaid, Carl, Tory, Me and a partridge in a pear tree, oh no just kidding. There sure was a lot of us. It was so nice to be with family though and to see all the little kiddos play with each other. Just as a side note this was the center piece for the table, it's a ring of living succulents. I love it.

Here's our little monkey being a ham for the camera

Thanksgiving weekend

So for Thanksgiving weekend we went down to Coeur d' Alene to be with Carl's family. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast at his parents house. It was a nice time to be with his parents, Grandma Joy and siblings. We stayed at my mom's house Thursday night and Friday night. All of my family were out of town so we had the house to ourselves. Friday morning (Black Friday) I got up I 5am or so and went and picked up Shasta to go to Joannes for there get fabric sale. They opened at 6am and we were there waiting in line with all the other crazy women, at 8:30 we had made it back to the car with just a bit of fabric.... somewhere around 125 yards or so. If anyone has some get ideas of things to make out of flannel pass it on, I have a little bit of it to use. After shopping Shasta went back to her family and I returned to Carl and Tory at my mom's. When finished out the day with dinner and the Christmas lights - Festival of Trees down town. All in all we had a great weekend together and look forward to making this a tradition.

This was my favorite tree at the festival, It had that cozy country Christmas feeling - I loved it.

Tory's new favorite thing

So climbing into thing and on things is Tory's newest thing. As you can see.... We were over at a friends house playing when I heard Tory crying just around the corner. So I went into the bed room where she was and this is what I found. She was actually standing up on all those movies and couldn't figure out how to get down. It was pretty silly, I ran to get my camera and by the time I got back she had sat down but still hesitant on how to get down. One night all of us were in the bedroom together, I must have just done laundry, so Tory's basket was empty. Carl being the goofball that he is finds joy in tormenting our cat Jackson, which leads him to being put into the basket and then Tory thought that she needed to be in there with him. Thankfully he is a very easy going cat, and loves the attention. So he didn't seem to mind entertaining Tory and Carl.

This is just another random time that I caught Tory in something. This is her toy basket in our living room. She had to empty out most of her toys to get in. I love how each day is such a new experience with her, she definitely keeps me on my toes and brings tons of joy to my life.