Festival of trees....well..."ginger trees" that is

This past December we had Christmas a couple of weeks early. My family, my amazing parents, my beautiful sisters, and my often sarcastic and funny brothers all headed for the hills.

18 people, 16 paper snowflakes, 15 ginger trees, 11 family meals, 8 different types of desserts, 6 bathrooms, 5 days, 4 nights, 3 reasons to celebrate, all on 1 big snowy mountain.


Here are some pictures of our "ginger tree" decorating competition. It was pretty fierce this year.




Lilly's Tree


Whitney's Tree


Nora's Tree


Mitchell's Tree


My Sister's Tree (and yes, she will hurt me if she finds out I posted this picture of her...but in all fairness she did strip me naked once and lock me outside when I was eleven...so I think we can call it good now!)

Brother Caleb had some trouble with Tree #1...he cried.

Actually...we all cried.


Momsie's Tree and an imposter tree...nice try brother Caleb.


Jake...eating his Tree.


Sister Alli and her Tree.


"Santa" Bill's Tree


The "Boy's" Tree.



Brother Micah's Tree.


Ella Bella's Tree


My "hunk o' burning love" and his Tree (be still my heart)


Graceful's Tree.

Lilly is our big winner for the "under 18" tree decorating contest!!


The big winner for the adults....


The King and Queen of our Castle!!


"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck"

Encourage~
Raine