Christmas Time Is Here: The Hunt for a Christmas Tree in the Neighborhood

When you spot reindeer indoors you know Christmas time has arrived.

When tools go missing,  I always know where to check.

Theo and Meadow were busy writing letters to Santa.

 

 

Meadow made this awesome drawing for the big guy.

 

And wrote a letter for her and Theo.
 

We had to pick up some groceries. Conveniently we can just walk over to the co-op now.

 

My parents found a fold up wagon for us. We've been wanting one since we've used theirs. It's perfect for getting groceries and carrying kids.  

Theo's favorite part is watching all the cars over the freeway.

There's a vintage car repair shop in our neighborhood. Sometimes we get to see cool cars. 

We thought that Nicollet Ace Hardware might have trees, but that wasn't the case. I knew of a lot a few blocks down near Grand Ave. Unfortunately it was closed for the night.

We had to get filled up on pancakes for our second attempt at getting a tree in the neighborhood.

Always reading at the table. 

Don't forget the smoothies.

 

We usually light candles in the winter during dinner. This year I found one that counts down the days until Christmas. 

 

 

This is one of my favorite apartment facades in the neighborhood. Zoom in on the glass above the entry. It's amazing.

Fleurs de Lee was open today and had a great selection of trees. Our new wagon was perfect for hauling it back home.

 

Scott didn't think it would work. While we were picking out our tree another family was there with their wagon doing the same thing. 

We haven't had a real tree since we lived in north Minneapolis. 

 

We let the kids play at the local Montessori schools playground. The signs on the school yard confuse us as to whether not we're allowed to play here on the weekend.

 

Once the tree was up it was back to work. Now that the wall has been fixed in the dining room it was time to paint. 

 

I recently discovered this old outlet in one of the bedroom closets in the rental.
 

 I installed the new sconces for one of the bedrooms while Brooke painted the dining room.

Somehow we had enough time to make homemade pizza too.

We waited a day to decorate the tree to give it time to relax. 

It snowed for the first time in a while.

Our nearest library is also only a couple blocks away. I took the kids their first then Scott met up with us to pick up Christmas lights for our tree at the hardware store. We also made a quick stop at the coop. Raising city kids over here. 

Brittany is borrowing our littlest tree and we decided to put our medium tree on the porch. No tree forest this year but having a real tree makes up for it. The lights we got at the hardware store are awesome. You can choose the lights to be colored or white. And it has a twinkling setting. 

Christmas decorations and a haircut in one night? We were productive.

 

The kids put out their stockings and dutch shoes for St. Nick. Only thing our house is missing is a fireplace. 

We decided to use my grandma's old tree skirt for the tree this year. I love it.

St Nick brought all the good gifts this year. Meadow also likes to leave out water for his horse.

This year Meadow got new pajamas, a gingerbread bath bomb, nutcracker chocolates, a lego figure, My Little Pony ornament, her favorite book, Guts, Mini Harry Potter ornaments, 100 colored pencils and a chocolate reindeer.

Chocolate coins were left in the shoes.

Theo got a new car, chocolate reindeer, pajamas that match Meadow's, a new book, nutcracker chocolates, a Cars magnetic activity and mini Star Wars ornaments. St Nick really spoiled the kids this year.