Early Christmas and Packing up.

The Christmas tree and decorations recently came out of storage...yes we have a marvelous fake tree.   We live in the Prairie where real Christmas trees are expensive.  Most of them look like the Charlie Brown tree, and tree farms are unheard of.   After years of freezing our tooshies off digging through piles of pathetic , over priced, frozen solid, imported pine trees....we bought this one.  

A perk is we can put it up in November!   We love having our tree and Christmas lights up.

The reason we have it up SO early this year is because we decided to have our little taste of our home Christmas before we leave for Mexico (where pine trees are even harder to come by).   We will be packing light so, other than a couple strands of lights, we won't be packing "Christmas" with us.  Christmas will be different this year.   In exchange for gifts wrapped under a tree, we will be taking gifts of food and blankets to people in need.   I'm sure we'll find some creative ways to make our little house in Mexico look festive...Mexican style.  

The kids  love decorating the tree.   They basically have free reign of the decorating process.

It made for some fun family memories.  

You know what else is going to make some awesome family memories?

Our road trip down to Mexico! 

Although I'm not really looking forward to 35 hours in a car with a 1 year old....I am looking forward to getting there!  

I started packing this week and my bedroom is storage for all my sorting piles and luggage.  

We have to pack pretty light considering the SUV space.  Not crazy minimalist light but I don't want to take anything that is not intentional.  

So far, I have packed 1 suitcase for the 5 day road trip to take into the hotel each night (this includes 5 peoples clothing, swimsuits, toiletries and our "medicine bag" (that can't freeze).   The hubster gets his own duffle bag so he can pack himself last minute and not complain how I packed his clothes.   We'll also be lugging in a portable bed (pack 'n play) each night.  I hope those three items, plus four sleepy kids, is all we'll have to transport to and from hotel rooms each night.

I  packed 1 plastic trunk tfor the rest of our personal items, some more clothes and sweaters for in Mexico (clothes pins, books, one dressy-ish outfit each for Church and Christmas Eve, shorts, reading material, summer shoes etc).  

 We'll also have a backpack to store our electronics (Nintendo ds, ipad, prortable dvd player, chargers, camera etc).  And of course a little bag of tricks to keep to keep the little people entertained (some small toys, pencil crayons, a puzzle book, stickers etc.)

On the roof of our car we'll have a Thule filled with blankets and other donations.  Rigged up to the trailer  hitch on the back of our SUV  we have a metal trunk that is already packed with gifts for our kid in Santa Fe. We packed backpacks for the 6 kids who call us Tia and Tio (Auntie and Uncle).  We filled each bag with clothing, toys, school supplies, treats, and shoes.  That trunk also holds a couple bags of clothes to share/donate, our umbrella stroller, and our Ergo baby carrier.

I was enjoying packing in peace and quiet once the kids were in bed.

The last few days we've had some sticky snow days (sticky snow days are rare here...it's rarely warm enough) and the kids have spent hours in the yard making igloos or whatever it is they are creating.   

I'm totally ok with trading the winter boots for flip flops in a couple weeks.  

Happy me.