I have been pretty much absent from blogging lately, but all for good reason. We had 2 really fun events that have taken up all of my spare time over the past month. First, it was my parents 40th wedding anniversary. My brothers and I decided to have a little surprise dinner and put together a simple photo album as a gift. Well the photo album turned out to be pretty epic. It was nearly impossible to do "simple" when going through 40 years of pictures. And we only had less than 2 weeks to work on it. So I basically used every spare second going through old pictures and scanning them, and then used iphoto to make a really cool photo book. And then Marc took all the digital files and turned them into a movie. And my brother found some old videos and had them make into dvd's. It all turned out super cool and my parents were surprised to say the least. The only picture I have of the night was this polaroid from the end of the night...
The next fun, but time consuming event was having a welcome home party for Marc's sister and boyfriend who just returned home from Iraq. We decided it would be nice to have the house all decorated for Christmas before the party, so we have been scrambling around to get all of that done over the past week. First it was the big tree hunting trip. Marc won this year and I agreed to go chop a tree down. I personally think this whole experience is over-rated and am more than happy to go pick one out from a tree lot, but I will admit that the kids had fun...
Finally, they found the perfect tree!
Timber!
My favorite part of the day was our stop at Ted's for lunch.
For the rest of the week, I diligently strung popcorn and cranberries, while Marc tinkered away in the basement playing with his new train set. This year he decided that Poppy and Sam must have the Polar Express train set. And that he would have to build an entire platform thingy for the train (and village) to go on under our tree.
After many, many, many hours of decorating, I finally present to you - our tree. I love how every single branch is dripping with ornaments, candy canes or icicles. Because you can never have too much on a tree, can you? And don't forget Marc's pride and joy, the train. (it's pretty darn cute how much Poppy and Sam love that train too)
With all of the decorating behind us, we were ready for Jeanna's homecoming yesterday. We were able to meet her at the armory, which Poppy was very excited to see. It was really neat (and emotional) to see the buses of troops being escorted by police and motorcycles and then all of the families cheering at their arrival...
(check out Poppy's welcome home sign she worked so hard on)
Aunt Jeanna is so strong!
Home, at last!
So as you can see, we've been quite busy lately. But now that the parties are over with, we get to relax and enjoy the holiday season. We've already started our advent calendar, which has been keeping us busy with fun little activities to get ready for Christmas. I'm trying to take a picture of each activity, so I will be posting those soon...
