It's the tree that does it

The boys have been looking forward to Christmas, but I haven't seen a lot of the super-excited silliness that I remember from being that age. I was worried we'd somehow lost the magic. But this afternoon we finally got around to buying our Christmas tree, and ever since then, it's like the Christmas light got turned on inside each of them.
When we got home from the ward party tonight, they all 3 ordered Ben and I into our bedroom because they "needed to have a secret Christmas meeting" in the kitchen. So cute!!
They're getting excited about buying each other presents, which also makes me very glad.
Ben is at the store buying more Christmas lights (we wrapped our lights up veeerrrry carefully last year in plastic, and STILL, after sitting in the box for a year, 3 of the strands don't work anymore. Why is that?! Anyway, tomorrow after church we'll decorate the tree and make our gingerbread house.
Only 5 more days!!


Here are some recent pictures.

Last Wednesday as I was driving the boys home from art, the clouds in the sky were so unusual. You can't see as well in the picture, but it looked exactly like the surface of a wavy ocean, but inverted. The clouds were in this really unusual undulating pattern. Yes, I took a picture as I was driving down the freeway. But as you can see, there really wasn't anyone else on the road!




Being down South, we don't get the beautiful changing leaves on the trees like other places. Heck, more than half of the trees here won't even lose their leaves! But there are a bunch of these particular trees here and there in Austin, and they are really breathtaking. Every time we pass one, the boys want me to take a picture, so on Thursday, I did! I don't know what kind of trees they are, but they sure are pretty.