Christmas Begins...

(written January 2017)

I've written a post about this before, but everywhere we visit, we pick up a Christmas ornament so that when we decorate our tree we can remember all of the places we've gone throughout our life together. This year we added one from Phuket, Thailand, which is where we visited for Christmas 2014.

Later we went to Chiang Mai, Thailand and got these three (they were having a strawberry festival of sorts and we picked strawberries while we were there):

 We also spent 9 days in China and got these:

 We bought a real tree this year for the first time ever. Marie and I rode home with the tree in the van and the boys walked. Marie freaked out having the tree in the car with her and cried the whole way home. And even after we had taken the tree outside after Christmas, she still got a little nervous every time she walked near it. My only guess is that maybe she thought it was an animal of some kind, and not a non-moving plant. Decorating the tree definitely marks the beginning of the Christmas season!

 When children decorate...

  The finished product!

Matt got some time off for Christmas, so we planned a trip to the South Island, where we had never been. So we did a Christmas morning at home about a week before Christmas...

 We really did well this year getting presents the boys REALLY wanted. Scotty talked about almost nothing but Bey Blades for weeks before Christmas, so we used some international Amazon Christmas magic to make it happen, and he was thrilled.

 Bobby had seen this BatBot in the toy store about two years before and still brought it up pretty regularly. He's only 4, so for him to remember for that long, we decided to make that happen as well. Also, thrilled.

 It was much harder to get that kind of reaction out of Marie, being only 1 year old, but she was cute anyway.

 One of Scott's presents was a tool box and a kit to make a race car out of wood. He looked so darn cute.

The next day, we started out on our big adventure...