The Second Oregon Trip: Christmas Part V

When my sisters and I were younger, we used to read The Night Tree by Eve Bunting every year around Christmas and decorate our own night tree. The book is about a family that drives just outside of their town's city limits to find the same tree in the woods that they have decorated every year at Christmastime. They decorate it with all sorts of goodies for the birds and animals to eat and leave it as their Christmas gift to the forrest. Since my sisters and I are all grown up, it's been a while since we last decorated a night tree. This year though, since our boys were in town and there is the perfect "night tree" in my parent's front yard (and really, just because we plain old wanted to), we revived the tradition! We all collected pinecones around my parent's property for a few days beforehand, Jenn and I had the *joyous* job of stringing oodles of popcorn, and then on the evening we were going to decorate the tree, we finished up the pinecones by rolling them in peanut butter and birdseed and hanging them on strings for the tree. 

My sister Kell keeps her drum set (yep, a drum set. She's that awesome!) in the garage, so while the big boys got their pinecones ready, Tanner rocked out with Auntie Jenn. Much more entertaining than pinecones!

Happy Emmikins hung out with Uncle Nathan inside while we got things ready outside where it was, in traditional Oregon fashion....

...pouring rain!

We bundled up though and decorated anyway!

Drew

Coll getting a boost from Daddy

Tan Tan and Lala

When we had finished hanging all the pinecones, the boys spread the extra birdseed on the ground...

...and set out apples and carrots for the deer and squirrels.

Elsie came out to decorate, all bundled up, for just a tiny bit.

Emmie did too!

We had a bonfire going and of course, when Drew finished up with the tree, it was time to sword fight the flames. Short lived. Very short lived.

I didn't grab any pictures, but the next morning, it had stopped raining and the tree was absolutely filled with happy birds and squirrels. The decorations lasted a few days and since you can see our night tree from my parent's kitchen window, it was fun to watch all the little critters pop in and out of the tree over three or four days after we had decorated.

The Second Oregon Trip: Christmas Part IV

Portland Zoo has an amazing Christmas Lights display during the Christmas season that we drove up  to see one evening. We went when the zoo first opened for Zoo Lights (it's a different ticket than a regular zoo visit, so limited hours as well) which gave us half an hour or so of daylight to let the boys see a few of the animals before starting with the lights. Unfortunately, most of my pictures from that night are from when it was still light out. Once the lights came fully on, I was all eyes on the lights and completely forgot about the camera. That's the way it should be though don't you think, present with those you're present with and not focused on continually "catching" the moment? Pictures or no pictures though, you can take my word for it, the lights were amazing!

Kristen, our beautiful, fun, energetic "friend with the extra sparkle", happens to live in Portland, so she met up with us to see the lights too.  It's probably a toss up for who loves her more, me or the boys, because they love Kristen! She is always, always up for playing with them and going along with their silly games! In the boys' world? That's instant love!

Another one always up for silly games with the boys? Poppi! You're all shocked by that fact, I'm sure.

Christi, baby Elsie and Ty Ty

Burke, baby Emmie (in her cocoon) and Jenn

The whole lot of us!

Cute Auntie Kell Kell

Sisters!

The zoo has two or three trains that run the property. Two of them were steam engines, but this is the only one I caught a picture of. Most years you can take a train ride to see the lights, but they were shut down for construction this year.

The boys roped everyone into a 3-D adventure ride while we waited for it to get dark enough to see the lights.

The lights are turned on gradually over that first Dusk half hour when you can get in to see Zoo Lights. They almost went unnoticed as they turned on and we looked at animals because it felt like we suddenly looked up and were in a totally new zoo!

I was surprised at the details! This was a "photo" wall all done in lights.

All the trees had each individual branch wrapped in lights. There had to have been hours upon hours that went into getting the zoo ready for all of this!

These are hard to see, but each of those lights is an animal next to a river. There was a crocodile, a flamingo, bears, etc.

And at the very end, you walked towards the exit through a long, winding light tunnel! 

It was well worth the drive as the lights were amazing, but I would definitely recommend going early! By the time we left, the line of people at the gates to get in, and the line of cars through the parking lots and on both sides of the freeway off ramps were insane (think cars stopped and waiting on the freeway for a good mile or two ahead of the off ramp!). In the time we were at the zoo though, it really didn't feel crowded until the very end of our visit, and by that point, we were fighting crowds only to be able to leave (completely bearable in my book).

The Second Oregon Trip: Christmas Part III

For as long as I can remember my mom has done a Cookie Day shortly before Christmas. Since we typically head to Lala and Poppi's house after Christmas, its been a while since we have been a part of it. This year however, we were up early enough that we were able to roll, cut, bake, frost, decorate, and pile with sprinkles to our little heart's delight! The boys ate it up, my mom ate it up...I ate it up! (Cheesy pun intended? Oh, you betcha!).

Loved his concentration!

...Drew's too!

Amid all the concentration though, plenty of silliness!

Emmikins joined in the fun too.

The boys loaded the sprinkles on!

Rumor had it though, Santa loves extra sprinkles! And good thing, too!

Tanner: Official taste tester

And of course, after all that hard work, taste testing for the big boys as well!

Such fun! So thankful to be a part of the it this year!