So it’s the Christmas season and we made our annual trek to Motley’s Christmas Tree Farm and Seasonal Extravaganza. Abby always wants to ride the cow train until she actually gets seated in one of the cows.

Selecting and cutting down your own tree is a lot of fun. The kind of fun I’ll never experience again unless we move to the Pacific Northwest. Gina has dropped the whole notion of actually choosing a locally grown Christmas tree and looks exclusively for those perfect trees that must be shipped in from farther north. Luckily for Motley’s they have an excellent selection of freshly hauled-in foreign trees.

The petting zoo is always fun. Gina loved the little pig wearing a sweater. Abby wouldn’t go near it. I failed utterly in my attempt to get an interesting photo of pig races. (I know, how is that different from the other photos on here? Very funny.)

Then it was home to put up and decorate the tree. Bad picture of me, but good picture of Abby.

These guys guard the living room from their sentry post on the mantle.

Abby’s offensive line.

Wine and hot dogs. We like to mix things up during the holidays.

Playing with whatever that red stuff is has been Abby’s favorite part of Christmas tree day for the last three years.

Abby stalking the wily tree lion to capture his elusive image.

I got a macro-focusing rail for Christmas and then I read on a photography blog about doing the Christmas-lights-bokeh thing. The two combined into a perfect storm of copycat macro photography of Christmas tree ornaments.

Not really. We had a great time on Christmas Eve with Nana and Gramps and Aunt Jodie.

Everybody got to open a present. Abby was knocked out by her new jewelry/music box. But when she opened it and found it empty, she frowned and said, “There’s supposed to be new jewelry in it.”

Gina was pretty pumped about her new one-cup-at-a-time coffee maker.

Santa made a special visit to Branson over the weekend so Mimi and Papa could get their Christmas on with Abby and the big winner from Christmas Haul #1 is the Razor scooter. We found this great unused parking lot in Branson, but she crashed after just a few minutes and wanted to rest for awhile. When we got back to Little Rock she made me take her to a “tennis course” because that was the smoothest place she could think of to ride on.

Mimi and Papa’s big hit was a new huge TV.

We spent most of the time watching Abby open her presents.

Abby doesn’t like to limit herself to just opening her gifts. She likes to get in on others’ opening their stuff.

We also went to the Christmas extravaganza at the Dixie Stampede, but you’re not allowed to take pictures inside and the photos I tried to sneak turned out too blurry and weird.

Abby’s letter to Santa. She heard me say that my all-time favorite Christmas gift was my Evel Knievel action figure and stunt cycle and a week later put it on her Santa list. She didn’t seem terribly interested in mailing anything to the North Pole and petered out on the list making. Later she came back and added the ink stamps and the pizza grease stain.

It snowed in Kansas on Christmas Eve and Gina and Abby wanted to see some of the white stuff. We loaded up on the day after Christmas and took off hoping the roads were passable to my parents’ place in southeast Kansas where they got 6-8 inches. The roads didn’t get dicey until we got into Kansas. We didn’t have any trouble until we turned into the driveway at Pleasant Hill Farm and promptly got stuck.

Abby had never seen snow before. (At least not that she could remember.) It would be a massive understatement to say that Abby LOVED THE SNOW in all caps. We got her into her hat and boots and she dove into the snow and rolled around and threw snowballs at everybody. She had so much fun that she didn’t notice how cold snow is. After about an hour she started crying about how her hands and feet hurt, but she still put up a fight over going inside to get warm. It was the first time she had ever gotten really, really cold.

Gramps got the snowplow stuck when he went out to free our car from the snowdrifts in the driveway.

That evening the legendary Team Jackass of geocaching fame set out on an epic sledding adventure. You may have heard about how flat it is in Kansas. Our first stop was on a gentle hill where a good pusher was needed to get the sleds going.

Then we got the idea to go out to the dam at Big Hill Lake, about 5 miles distant. The Corps of Engineers actually calls the area Kansas’ Little Ozarks, if you can believe that. Bingo! The highest spot in Labette County was sporting a deep layer of packed powder. I even got to fulfill my dream of sledding down one of those long concrete ditches you see on the sides of major roadways and dams. It wasn’t quite like the bobsled run I have imagined for many years, but it was pretty decent.

We moved on to the main run on the side of the dam. It was ingeniously designed as two levels with a short flat spot in between. That meant the chickens of the bunch (ahem, Jodie) could just go down the lower section and the brave could go to the top of the dam and cover both stretches. A giant flood light standing on top of the dam gave off just enough illumination so we could see to head in the right direction. The only danger was a couple of pipes sticking up through the ground at the bottom waiting to split a wayward sledder in half. But they were pretty spread out and Katie was the only one to get anywhere close.

It was full-on dark when we got there, so I left my camera in the car. Dumb idea. Gramps brought his camera though and caught Amy careening down the first slope onto the flat. It was pretty terrifying the first time you ran it. Think Clark Griswold and his amateur-recreational-saucer-sled-land-speed record. Abby and I made a couple of runs together down the bottom slope. On the second run she got a face full of snow when the nose of the sled dug in a little. She said she was ready to go home to Mama after that.

The next day we went out to see Grandma Dailey at the assisted living home. She gave Abby a beautiful book of Bible stories.

We worked in some Christmas activities, also. Abby got one of those wooden Thomas The Tank Engine train tracks and showed Gramps how to set it up.

After enduring weeks of a Christmas-fueled Abby, endless viewings of RTRNR and last-minute runs to Toys R Us, the big day finally arrived. It was the first Christmas when Abby was fully cognizant of the implications of the season. I got all my picture-taking junk set up the night before (I used the Strobist Christmas game plan) in anticipation of capturing the surprise and wonder on Abby’s face when she saw Santa’s bounty laid before her. But instead of letting her awaken to her own circadian rhythm, we woke her up, which resulted in her being groggy, confused and in a kinda cranky mood. She did show a little classic Christmas emotion when her jaw dropped upon seeing the half-eaten cookies and empty milk glass left from Santa’s late-night snack.

After she recovered her composure she fell to opening presents as if she had been training for an Olympic event. Once she got through one she called out “More presents,” and her assistants, Mimi and Mom, would hand her the next victim.

She likes to play with my camera, so she asked Santa to bring her a “girl camera” and he did. Santa even took a picture of himself with it to prove he had really been there. She spent a long time photographing all her stuff. (Her Flickr account will be up and running shortly.)

Just when she thought she’d gotten through all the presents, she discovered her stocking hung with care by the chimney Gina had drawn on butcher paper in the Magic Marker™ medium and taped on the wall. “I didn’t know there’d be presents in here,” she allowed.

Abby got Gina a Snuggie™ and she promised me she wouldn’t tell before Christmas Day. She lasted about a day before she let it slip to her mom. Gina said Abby instantly put her head in her hands when she realized what she’d done.

The Snuggie™ is not sexy.

Gina was ecstatic to receive one of those radios where you can plug in your iPod™ to listen to the music over it.

The biggest hit of the day was the Baby Alive™ doll. You feed it this special slimy food and chase it with some water and then mere moments later it poops and then asks to have its diaper changed. Yes, it’s as creepy as you think.

Abby also roped us all into endless games of Hungry, Hungry Hippos™. She got upset whenever there was one marble left and she couldn’t get it, so she’d just grab it and lift up her hippo’s mouth and stuff it in.

Abby’s too young to realize it, but she’s a lucky, lucky girl. Not everyone gets this kind of largesse for Christmas. We’ll work on that concept next year.

Time for the annual family Christmas portrait. Merry Christmas to you and yourn.

Strobist info: Last year I used a single reflective umbrella and another flash for a hair light and I had weird shadow issues. This year I used the reflective umbrella on camera right with an SB-600 at 1/4 power and my ghetto foam-core softbox on camera left with an SB-26 also at 1/4. I wanted to keep the light ratio very close. Even though both flashes were on 1/4 power, the different modifiers put out different light levels. The softbox was a little brighter than the umbrella.

Abby met Santa for the first time on Sunday. This is the first Christmas where she really knows what’s going on, Santa and presents and being good and the whole bit. She’s literally been bouncing off the walls. She’s hurt her knee and cracked her head and skinned her elbows.

She is notorious for not enjoying things normal kids really like. So keeping in mind that Santa as a concept is really weird and dudes dressed all in red from head to foot are scary, we coached her extensively before going to the mall. We told her there would be a long line and the whole thing was going to move fast. She’d have to get right up there and talk to Santa and smile when told to for the picture.

She went right up to him and got on his lap and told him what she wanted. And she at least looked toward the camera when we told her the picture was coming.