Christmas Party

This year we had our annual Christmas Eve celebration a few days early. Each year we get together with both my mom's family and part of my dad's to celebrate Christmas. My mom makes a delicious dinner and Santa makes an appearance. This is great fun for not only the kids, but adults as well! This is the highlight of my dad's year, and I am so glad we have such a wonderful tradition. Thanks mom and dad for all of your love and hardwork that goes into making this such a special day each year!!!

O-Christmas Tree (part 2)

My favorite part of Christmas is decorating the tree. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this year we put up a real tree. It smells so good and looks so nice. Once Mike put up the lights it was time for the kids to put their decorating skills to work! I must say, they did a great job! It's looks like Christmas at the Kener home.

Christmas Parade

One of our new family traditions is to attend the annual Christmas Parade.
We found out about it by accident last year and had such a great time that we went again this year. The parade starts out with a Santa 5K race, which is quite a sight to see. Hundreds of "Santa's" running down the Boulevard!
Once it begins to get dark the parade begins. There are floats-a-plenty, all lit up in the spirit of the season.
Candy is thrown Mr. and Mrs. Claus wave a hello.
The night is complete after walking through the Christmas Village which is lit up after the parade. It was very crowded at this point and cold, so we will check this out at a later date.

O-Christmas Tree, O-Christmas Tree....

This year we decided to get a real tree. It's been a few years and since I threw out the artificial tree last year, we decided this was the year to bring back the tradition of the real tree. We had planned to take a day trip up the mountain to cut down our own, but couldn't get a permit close enough to home so it was off to a tree lot we went.
It was a tough decision; do we get a tall skinny tree, or a 8-9 foot full tree? Well, the shorter tree won because it smelled so good and fresh!