The Perfect Tree

Growing up in the Hinkle house, the Saturday after Thanksgiving was dedicated to going out, finding, cutting down and hauling home the perfect Christmas tree. Also, because our living room had vaulted ceilings, we kids always rooted for the BIG trees and many years they would end up being 10 - 15 feet tall! So, included with finding this perfect tree would be: lever and pulley it up to the living room, securing it to the wall in 2 spots, making sure it was square in the stand without breaking it and then taking lots of "stand back and look to see if it is straight" looks. All this and it still wasn't 100% that the tree would stay up. My parents and each of my siblings and I can all recall different years when the tree fell down, ornaments and all!

Even though it was probably a pain for my dad to do all the work of the lights, and a pain for my mom to haul out all the boxes of ornaments, and a nuisance to army crawl with a gallon of water every night to water the tree and a conundrum on how to dispose of such a beast each year; the memories that we made were priceless. Every Christmas I reminisce and am thankful that even though my parents would always bring along the measuring tape and say "this year we are getting a small tree" and every year we would return with a behemoth, that there wasn't a small part of them that was happy; because this was exciting, this was our something special, this was making memories!

For the last 6 Christmas's Paul and I have decorated our home with a small, artificial, pre-lit tree. This was practical in an apartment and on the occasions that we traveled at Christmas. Well this year, we are in our house, we aren't traveling (for the most part) and Nora is old enough to understand and enjoy the excitement of Christmas. So, the Saturday after Thanksgiving we loaded up the car with the appropriate tools; bungee cords, ropes, tarp, saw and no tape measure (!!!) and we headed out to find the first perfect Standen Christmas tree.

So many trees, so hard to choose!

Paul, hard at work chopping down our tree.

Nora and Liam had great fun getting "lost" in the woods.

Triumphant!

Not a behemoth, but the perfect tree for our house and family.

The ladies enjoyed a hot cup of cocoa as the boys loaded the trees on the cars!

I would say this year is a success...Nora squeals with delight every time we plug in the tree lights, she has her favorite ornaments that she looks at everyday and even though we didn't have to secure the tree to the wall to keep it vertical, it is still a beautiful and impressive tree!

Merry Christmas!

Fall Leaves

In our front yard we have a HUGE liquid amber tree. Currently it has dropped about a 1/4 of its leaves and as it stands, we would have to rake our lawn every day to be able to see grass! A couple of weeks back we had time to rake the leaves and also have a little fun too!

The culprit.

First work...

...then play!

What a life!

2 Cool!

On October 30 we celebrated 2 birthdays!

Nora turned 2

Paul turned 30

Paul felt like his life would be over once he turned 30 so we really made a concerted effort to focus on Nora's birthday and not so much on Paul's.

The day began with a beautiful rendition of Happy Birthday to wake up Nora then we headed out for breakfast with the grand parents and the Shulls.

Afterwards we ventured out to paint pottery. Paul continues to tease me about this decision. He thought it was strange but in all actuality it was great fun. It got everybody doing something that they don't usually do, it stimulated the creative side of all of us that sometimes is dormant and we had a fun time making memories together.

I had all the grand parents paint a piece of dishware for Nora so that whenever she eats she will have something from one of her favorite people and she will remember and think of them often. I thought it was a total success. Paul still teases me though!

Aaron had a lot to say about his piece!

After pottery, we went home for naps...well Nora & Nani napped while Paul and his dad put recessed lighting up in one of our rooms! Very productive!

After everyone woke up and the lights were installed, Paul and I headed out to dinner, just the two of us, while Nora stayed with her Nani & Papa.

All in all, it was a great day! And if you were wondering, Paul made it through his 30th birthday, his life did not end, he found some other reason to live and we are happy to have him around. It is great to have a 2 year old and a 30 year old in the house! It keeps life interesting!

Family Fun Night 2010

Another year, another Family Fun Night!

This event is put on by our church as an alternative or extra Halloween event. There is everything from games, trick-car-treat, pumpkin carving, face painting and much more! Paul and I have our hand in a little bit of everything at this event. It is a lot of work but totally fun.

Nora and Liam, the Bumble Bee and Lady Bug!
I pity the flower that attracts these two insects!

The Lady Bug and her Old McDonald!

Nora with Ms. Sheri at Trick-Car-Treat.
Nora had a blast "helping" hand out candy.

Room Renos.

As I have blogged before, whenever my parents come to town they like a good project. Well I picked out a humm-dinger for my dad this time. In one of our upstairs bedrooms we have wanted to put bead board up. So I thought to myself that this could be a good weekend project for my dad to conquer. He was gracious and took it on. The project was more involved than I thought it would be but the results are fabulous!

Take a look...

Before

Making the straight cuts.
My dad is REALLY good at measuring twice and cutting once.
There wasn't any wasted materials at the end of the day!

Liam and Nora watching Pappy work with the noisy and messy saw. They were mesmerized!

After!

Thank you dad for all your hard work and precision. The end result exceeded my expectations!

Going Pumpkin!

Going to get the perfect pumpkin!

I like this one!

Time for carving.

Laying out the game plan.

When Paul took off the top Nora yelled "Put it Back!" She was slightly horrified at all the mess that was in the gut of the pumpkin!

As Paul and Nora were diligently carving the pumpkin I was hard at work cleaning and salting the seeds to toast and enjoy later. Well, I did one too many things while they were in the oven and guess what I got???
Burnt pumpkin seeds!! :(

Paul was a good sport and still ate the slightly less burnt one!

The final product.
The small pumpkin represents Nora.
She wouldn't sit long enough to take a cute picture with the pumpkin!

1 month update

Ok, so it has been about a month since I have last posted (at least!) and a lot has gone on (hence the gap in posts!). Since Thanksgiving I have felt a surge of energy to keep the blog alive (thank you Cousin Amy for the encouragement and Michaela for the inspiration)! So here I go...here is what has happened in the month (or so) since I have last posted.


Trip to the pumpkin patch

Carved pumpkins

Room renovation

Nora's 2nd Birthday

Paul's 30th Birthday

Huge family event around Halloween at our church

Halloween

Christmas shopping

Cathryn's birthday

Thanksgiving with Cathryn's family

Christmas with Cathryn's family (yes we did this about a month early)

Now I will post pictures. Forgiveness please for the Halloween pictures in December! Such is life!

Family Vacation

A couple of weeks ago we took a family vacation up to Lake Tahoe. The peace and quiet was overwhelming and balm for the spirit! We were sad to come home at the end!

We took a walk everyday and it was here that Nora learned that she liked to run and she liked it best when we all ran together!

Paul loves to fish and he was glad he got the opportunity to put his line in a couple of times!

We had fun throwing rocks into the river which I was informed later, by Paul, was not good for people who may have been fishing down stream!

Nora loved watching the trains come and go!

Picnic in the Park

We recently had a day off when nothing was planned! One of the things we decided to do was have a picnic in the park! Once all the food was made we are were too hungry to pack everything up so we just took it to the front yard and had a picnic on the green!

Nora's Graduation

In September Nora graduated from the nursery at our church to the preschool! Even though she isn't quite 2 yet (possibly a sign of things to come i.e. kindergarten), she moved up with her friends and she has been doing great! It was a little sad to see my baby in with all those big kids but she can definitely hold her own and maybe I need to not think of her as my baby anymore!

All ready for her first Sunday in the preschool!



After a morning of seeing friends, learning about Jesus, doing crafts and having snacks she was feeling integrated and worn out!

My baby is not such a baby anymore!

Greatest Apologies

My greatest apologies for the blog drought! These past few months have been littered with change, both good and not so good, and with that has come a much busier schedule. So I have either been busy or tired, which has shoved blogging to the back burner. I feel now that my life is beginning to even out and I will be able to return to blogging more regularly. More importantly I will be doing it because I want to and because it brings me joy, instead of doing it out of obligation and guilt!

I look forward to sharing with you our family's comings and goings!

Stay tuned, because we have a lot to get caught up on!

A Day at the Gardens

The other day we had friends in town and they wanted to do something fun with the kids. None of us had been to Gilroy Gardens so we looked it up, got a coupon and headed down the hill to Gilroy. It was actually a blast! Most of the rides were appropriate for Nora so she really had fun! It wore her out! As soon as we got in the car to go home her head went back and she was asleep! I don't think she has ever had that much fun!

Here are some pictures.

Here are our friends (Justin, Kristen, Gianna & Naomi) going up, up, up in the hot air balloon!

Kristen & Gianna riding the cars.

Taking a ride on the ferris wheel.
Nora wasn't afraid of anything. She kept this mild smile on her face during all the rides and was always excited to go on the next one!

The view from the top!

By the end of the day I think Nora was more ready to be the passenger on the car ride than the driver!

Our take on Gilroy Gardens...fun for families with young kids. Way too expensive if you don't have a coupon and go on a weekday, if you can, because there were no lines for any of the rides!
All-in-all, a great day!