It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas

In addition to breaking out all the concrete this weekend, we tore out some shrubs and a planter box from the front porch. I am not sure what type of plant it was. Some sort of evergreen whose scent reminded me of pine trees when I walked by.
We tore them out by wrapping a chain around the base of the trunks and pulling them with the Cat. They came out roots and all, like puling weeds.
Troy was as happy as a kid on Christmas. He just loves driving Mechanical things. So do the boys- just like their dad.
I don't know why I am posting this ridiculous picture, but this is a shot Troy took from the drivers seat of the Cat while I was chaining up the trunks. You can see the scoop in the top of the picture.
I always liked those shrubs, but wasn't as sad to see them gone as the fruit trees. In fact, I think I like the house better than when the planter box was there.
Here's what the front of the house looks like today. See the small patch of green grass? My whole lawn looked like that yesterday morning. It is amazing how much havoc a tractor can wreck on a lawn in only a few hours. Oh, well, I guess Troy won't have to worry about mowing the lawn this summer. Lucky guy.

Oh, the Lights on My Tree, I Wish You Could See...

Putting up our tree this year was a 4-day process:

Day 1 Saturday We went Christmas tree shopping. First stop: Home Depot, second stop: Smith's, third and final stop: Christmas tree lot where we found our perfect tree. We dragged it to the guy, who cut the base and also told us they only accepted cash or check. Nicole didn't have her purse with the checkbook and accompanying wads of cash, and Troy's wallet only contained cards. The guy was really nice, and let us take the tree home with the promise that we would return later and pay for it. We did. We couldn't decorate it that night, because we had tickets to the Glenn Beck Christmas Show. So, we stuck it in the snow in our front yard and left it there.

Day 2 Sunday We rested. So did the tree. It snowed Sunday morning and flocked our tree. It looked like we had a live tree growing in our yard. We thought about leaving it there, but decided against it.

Day 3 Monday For family home evening, we decided to bring in and decorate our tree. Troy pulled his chainsaw and the tree stand out of the shed and made a fresh cut on the tree. He shook off as much snow as he could, but it had frozen to the boughs, so we had to put towels on the floor under the tree to absorb the water as it all melted. Timmy had fun picking clumps of snow from the branches and eating it. We decided to put the lights on Monday night, but to wait until the snow melted to put the ornaments on it.

Day 4 Tuesday Timmy, Spencer and I put the ornaments and candy canes on the tree while Daddy was at work on Tuesday. It took a very long time because Timmy would take an ornament, hand it in one place, then remove it and replace it on a different branch. He repeated this process about 5 times for each ornament until he found exactly the right, perfect spot.

Day 15 Today Our tree it now bare on the bottom third is bare of any decoration other than lights. The candy canes were the first to disappear, then one by one the ornaments showed up in places other than the tree and I put them on the upper half of the tree. So, we have a funny looking tree, but it is still our perfect tree.

We wish you all a merry Christmas!