It's the time of year, where we drag all of the Christmas decorations from underneath the house to make the yard and our despositions a little more festive. Of course, I'm a little more eager than Ryan to get started this year. The Christmas season has definitely snuck up on us. Although, I did start seeing fake trees and lawn decorations in stores at the end of September! Our new house's roof isn't at a 90º angle like the one in Roseville, so Ryan is more willing to climb onto the roof to hang lights. We set up the usual decorations we use every year, and some new ones! After dark, we took Kiley on a walk up the street to look at the lights already up on Black Friday. Every word out of her mouth seemed to be, "Whoa! 'Ook Mommy!"It's going to be a real treat this year to go around looking at Christmas lights with Kiley! Now that the front yard was all decorated, it was time to think about doing the inside. We needed our tree first! So, this last four-day, we decided to get our Christmas tree. It was a perfect late fall/early winter day to go looking in the chilly afternoon air. We headed out to a local Christmas tree farm in Foresthill. Snowy Peaks is a real-deal Choose and Cut tree farm. It's not like other farms we've been to in the past, where you choose but they cut it for you. Snowy Peaks hands you a saw, and says, "Good luck!" Ryan was so disappointed when he found out we couldn't go out into the woods to cut down our tree because the National Forest Service near us doesn't issue Christmas tree permits. He really wanted it to be like the Griswold's Family Christmas. :o) Snowy Peaks had so many great trees, we had a hard time deciding. We finally found "The Tree" after about 30 minutes of looking and hiking. Kiley tripped a couple times over old stumps and rocks, but was a big girl and got right back up to keep on trekkin'! It was a great family outing! Kiley truly enjoyed her first ever candy cane! She was a sticky mess afterwards, but totally worth it. Now, whenever I ask her if she likes candy canes, her answer is, "Mmmmm!" Later that night, after dinner, we all helped decorate the rest of the house and tree. Kiley was fascinated with all of the ornaments, especially her "Baby's First Christmas." She liked looking at the picture of the smiling baby. It's hard to believe just two short years ago, I took that exact picture of Kiley looking up at the Christmas tree and capturing one of her first smiles. Aww, memories!Unfortunately, Ryan works on Christmas Day this year (and, next year, too!), so we will be celebrating a day early or a day late. Luckily, for now, Kiley isn't old enough to know any different!