The Beginings of Christmas!

The day after Thanksgiving we headed to Charlottesville to spend the day with our good friends the Trimbles, Williams and Muellers! Laura and Aaron very kindly entertained and fed all of us in their lovely home even though Aaron is currently in residency and working nights! It was such a pretty day - we all enjoyed hanging out on UVA's grounds (yes, they are called "grounds", not "campus" - you might call it a rather preppy school ;)). Evie loved running around with Adelynn and Margaret. They were both so sweet to "Baby Evie". I didn't get the greatest pictures, but it's hard with 3 active little girls!

During nap time in the afternoon the guys all played strategy games and us girls made wreaths!! REAL wreaths! Like go-out-into-the-woods-and-pick-real-greenery-and-berries-and-pinecones kind of wreaths! Laura has the perfect yard for gathering greenery. Here we are ready to begin!
I can't believe I didn't get a picture of everyone's final masterpiece, but here is Laura with here's a picture of Laura with hers and a picture of mine on our wall. .
I think this should be a new Thanksgiving tradition, friends... :)

On Saturday we headed out to the forest (aka, Lowe's) to get our Christmas tree! Evie loved helping pick it out. She inspected each option very carefully
We don't want Evie playing with the real tree, but to keep it from being too tantalizing, we decided to get Evie her own little tree that she CAN play with and decorate. She is thrilled. She didn't want to venture far from it all weekend and it was the first thing she'd go to whenever she woke up from a nap or we came home from running errands. Here she is decorating it and then the final product. :) (btw - do you notice that little tiny curl at the back of her head?? It think the curly hair is coming!! :))
I don't have a good picture yet of our real tree, but here we are with Great-Grandma and Grandpa Mortier in front of the beautiful tree at the Dewitt Wallace art museum yesterday. :)
Evie was only mildly interested in the art museum, but it was funny to see what random pieces of art stood out to her. Her favorites were a masthead from a ship poking out from the wall (not pictured) and this funny folk art picture of a little girl and her kitty. She kept running over to it and pointing up at it. :)