It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

There are still pumpkins on my front porch and turkey scraps in my fridge, but its time to move on to the next holiday! It was a perfect day to dig into our Christmas decorations and the boys were a big help! I woke up early (as usual) and rearranged the family room so that our tree could stand in the window. Then I went out and got our tree, which I bought just a few days before Christmas in 2001. I bought it to be a decoration at our wedding reception and its still our Christmas tree. I decorated ornaments to say "The Smiths Dec 29, 2001", hung them on the tree and gave them away as wedding favors. It was a budget wedding. You can see it here behind me and my little sister, Brittany. Isn't she cute? Come home from Korea already, Brit. But I digress...

The only year we haven't used it was in 2005 when I bought a real one. Its very skinny but since we seem to have Christmas in a different house every year, and some have very small family rooms, it works just fine for us! Anyhoo, I brought the tree in from the shed and unpacked it but someone, most likely me, didn't pack the screws for the stand very carefully because they were gone. I was afraid this was an early wrench in my plans and would require a trip to Lowe's but luckily I found some replacements in the garage! When we were ready to put them in Nolen said, "I have a toy screwdriver, maybe it will work and I can help you." How sweet is that? I explained that the toy wouldn't work, but he could help me use the real one and he did. He's getting so big. After we got the tree up, I had a fight with the Christmas lights and I'm sad to say that the lights won. I've always used white pearl lights on my tree, but this year, only 2 of the 5 strands worked. So, it was off to my favorite store...TARGET! I ended up buying LED lights and they look completely different and may take some getting used to.

Since it took me all day just to get my skinny tree to stand upright with lights on it, I made let the kids do the rest of the work. There were some ornaments that I put aside because I didn't quite trust the boys with them, but they hung most of them themselves. After awhile Max started getting silly but Nolen kept working on his project.


Nolen was very excited to put the star on the top of the tree. I made Ed lift him up - which was a mistake since he had been telling me all day that his back hurts and his medicine is at work...sorry Ed! Look at the grimace on his face. :-(

I love this picture. Look how proud he is of himself!

I think we're getting Christmas started off right around here...maybe I'll even do some baking with the boys today! Or maybe I'll just sit next to my tree with some hot cocoa and watch football.