the koch side of life: January 2012

Well I meant to post about our cutting down our Christmas Tree, decorating and family Christmases all separately... but seeing as I've procrastinated into 2012 I'm just going to combine them into one big Christmasy post.

My family has always had the tradition of going to cut down our Christmas Tree together. To be honest, I'm not quite sure how my parents continued this through mine and Kelsey's teenage years as it always resulted in a heated debate between then two of us over who's tree was prettier, greener, more full, stood straighter, had more pine cones, etc, etc... until one of us finally begrudgingly caved in. However they managed, I am glad they put up with us all those years because it is a tradition that I really loved and have wonderful memories of.

So this year Ryan and I decided to continue on the tradition and cut down our own tree. We ventured out to Walls Family Farms which is outside of Terrell, TX. We got to take a tractor pulled hay ride out to the fields where we searched diligently until we found the perfect tree.

It was some hard work...

but he made it!

We had a lot of fun decorating our new house for Christmas! We even found the old style big colored lights at Wal-Mart. We also got a lot of Christmas decorations from our wonderful grandmothers... we didn't get to use them this year, but we can't wait until Christmas 2012!

We had to have a make-shift mantle this year, but hopefully by next year we'll have a real one.

Kali seemed to approve... she and Murphy also loved to "help" unwrap presents.
So here's one mass apology for all of the missing bows and torn paper. :)

We spent Christmas in Austin this year. It was really nice to be home for the holidays and spend time with lots of family!