The Perfect Tree

Today we visited this farm. It's a great tree farm that we've gone to every year since moving here. The kids love it because there is a hayride with Santa, pony rides, coloring books and candy canes, and lots of trees. You can cut your own here or they have pre-cut trees. We were on the hunt for the perfect tree today but there was one problem.... we all had our own idea of the perfect tree. This was the first year Avery really cared what our tree looked like and because Avery cared, Alia did too. Here are our picks....


I really liked this crazy tree but Avery said it didn't look like a spaceship so he didn't want that one.

Here is the spaceship Avery found. He said the tree had to be fat and wide. I think he picked out a 12 foot tree. For obvious reasons we didn't pick this one.


When I told Alia to stand by the tree she picked, she wanted to do a pose for me. Here is her lovely pose. Her tree is the tiny tree on her right.


This is the tree we all agreed on.




You get a free horse ride with the purchase of your tree. Alia was very excited, she's been asking to ride a horse for a very long time. This horse's name is Encore and he was the horse that pulled Cinderella's carriage at Disneyland.




Ready for Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year we decided to stay home and celebrate Thanksgiving with just the four of us. It was a nice relaxing day of baking, watching the dog show, hiking and playing.


This one's for you Grandpa Davis. We enjoyed making the meal together this year. We made the turkey in the crock-pot which made it really moist.


And of course we made 3 desserts for a family of 4 because that is the most important part of any feast. This year we tried three new desserts. The first is a chocolate pumpkin pie. We added caramel to the top and it was amazing! The next dessert was an apple blossom tart. The only change to this recipe was we added a caramel-apple crumble to the top. All dessert recipes came from here.


This dessert was Avery and Alia's favorite. We took a melon baller and made mini caramel apples. Avery loved launching the balls across the floor.


While this was a fun activity for all of us, the caramel wouldn't stick to the apples.


We enjoyed the 70 degree temps and went for a walk.








Of course Thanksgiving here isn't complete without a visit to Macy's Pink Pig, Priscilla.

Halloween 2011

Halloween this year was extra special because Grandma and Grandpa were here. Alia had a blast with Grandma


showing her all of her dolls and stuffed animals


and playing outside with the big red ball.

She also had some Grandpa time playing a hilarious game of hide and seek.


Here she is finding Grandpa.

Grandpa also spoiled both of them with a fun day at the park.



We all joined in to carve up some crazy pumpkins. Alia and Avery both drew faces on their pumpkins for me to cut out. They had a blast pulling the seeds and guts out.


Can you feel the creative power at work?


Inspecting our handy work


Avery being silly as usual.


The middle pumpkin was Avery's design.

Then came Halloween and out came our valiant knight that had to "Protect all of the princesses" and our scary dragon.






Heading out for the trick or treating


Here was the full Halloween crew.

It was so much fun watching them all scurry from house to house. Halloween was more fun this year now that both Avery and Alia could enjoy the fun.