It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We are (mostly) recovered from our bouts of strep throat (ellie), croup (nathan) and remnants of both of those "landing" on Frank and me. We have spent a lot of our spare time recently gearing up for the holidays. Ellie is beyond excited... very into the whole Santa thing. She's got a lot of questions, too... and not growing up with Santa myself, I'm not sure that I even know the whole "lie" -- it's a bad combination. She's a sharp cookie - I figure we've got like one or two years tops left with her "believing." And Nathan is still blissfully unaware... no list of "I wants" and he'll be happy with whatever shows up under the tree. His big thing this season is "ho ho ho...happy halloween." He's always at least one holiday behind. He didn't stop with the "happy mother's day" until like September - gotta love it.

We got our tree last weekend. Not at a real nursery -- at Lowe's. It's not our finest tree, but it'll do for this year -- and the price was right -- $35! We were paying like $75 or $80 in chicago from a local nursery. Between the Omaha factor and the Lowe's superstore factor, we got quite the deal. Sure, it's decidedly not as fresh, but whatever - we only have to leave it up for a few weeks. We will likely "take down" Christmas on the 26th anyways, so it doesn't have to last long. The kids had fun decorating the tree and seeing all of the ornaments again. I love the lower branches the best -- most of them have like 4 or 5 ornaments each - all clumped up together :) We didn't even "fix" it -- sort of sums up the tree trimming experience this year.

This morning we went to the club (la dee da) for "brunch with Santa" -- it was fun. We don't go to "fancy" places to eat very often. Ellie got a kick out of dressing up and putting her cloth napkin in her lap. Nathan was absolutely tickled to be drinking apple juice out of a big fancy wine glass. Both kids were happy with the "buffet style" set-up -- eat as much of whatever you want and don't choose anything you don't want. Ellie was also surprised to see the huge table of desserts. I mean, was this a dream come true? Unlimited waffles and bacon...and then a chocolate brownie? Santa and Mrs. Claus were just kind of fixed by the front door. Neither one of the kids was too interested in sitting on their laps, but we were "allowed" to take one photo (the one above) if Frank held nathan and ellie could just stand next to Mrs. C. Good enough... brunch with santa...it's a wrap.

Hope everyone has a great, stress-free week!