It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Christmas season. Since we always go to Idaho for the Thanksgiving holiday, we HAVE to put out our decorations the weekend before. If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to do it as a family until a week after Thanksgiving, and that just would not do.

Saturday morning everybody was up before 7:30am and ready to get decorating. I'd put away our Thanksgiving decorations, dusted, vacuumed, and cleaned all day Friday so we'd be all ready. We got a pretty good start with the little things and then Nate was called to help a family in the ward move. I was asked to watch a couple little boys so their Dad could help too. So we put things on hold until about 1 when the Dads were back and lunch was cleaned up

Before we had any more interruptions, it was time to get out the tree. Kayla thought it would be fun for all us girls to be presents. Nate thought it would be especially fun to get pictures.
Allie kept showing us how HIGH she could reach.

Kayla wanted to make sure the top got decorated too.

Look at the pretty ornament.

Oh yeah. I can hold three.

This was the first year Allie got to put the topper on the tree. Our star is the only thing we added to our tree this year.

Then the kids got to decorate the little tree all by themselves. Rudolph had fun hanging ornaments.

Kayla knew she could put the garland on all by herself.

Since Allie got to put the topper on the big tree, Kayla got to add the snowflake to the top of this one.

At this point the kids had had enough and went outside to play. Nate and I kept working. Nate decided since we were putting snowflakes in the lower windows, he would add some up high as well.

I love how all our decorations turned out. We liked things last year, but they were pretty sparse in some areas. With careful planning, we were able to buy a few things at great deals and find other things from around the house to create the look we wanted.

Here's the kids tree all finished.

Our family room.

The entertainment center, count down train, and Christmas book count downs.

Last year I heard about the tradition of letting the kids fall asleep around the tree on the first night it gets decorated. I wanted to try it, but last year we figured Allie was just too young to actually go to sleep out there. This year we let the girls try it. They got to watch a Strawberry Shortcake Christmas movie, and then we turned on the Christmas songs and Nate and I fell asleep on the couch with the kids only minutes behind us.

Of course about 1am Nate and I slipped away to the comfort of our own bed while the kids enjoyed the glow of the tree. I think this is going to be a fun tradition.