Thursday, December 17, 2015

Trimming the Tree and Decking the Halls

Decorating the tree this year was so much fun. The kids are both at great ages for "helping" and they were both eager to do so.

Avery was so cute. She is always willing to say "cheese" for the camera.


I managed to snap this picture of both of them in front of the tree with my phone before we got started decorating. :-)

Every year we let our tree sit in a bucket of water to get a good drink over night and then Jake brings it in the next day for me to decorate. I always get it trimmed up and put the tree skirt around it and take a picture so that I have an un-decorated picture and then a decorated picture. This was just something I did the first year and have continued ever since. This year, with having all of our stuff in storage, we had to try and dig through our storage locker to find our Christmas boxes. We found the 2 I thought we would need that had all the stockings, ornaments and lights in them so we grabbed those 2 and made our way back home to decorate. Once we got home and I started going through stuff, I realized we were missing something... the tree skirt. Jake's Great Grandma made each of her grandchildren a tree skirt several years ago, even before Jake and I got married. Jake's mom held on to it and gave it to us the first Christmas after we were married. It's really special and means a lot to us. I'm so bummed we didn't get it from storage, but we made due with this Christmas blanket I happened to have in one of the boxes.

I put the lights on and then Jackson and Avery helped me hang the ornaments on the tree. Avery is still a little bit to small to really help but she tried her best and it was really cute. Jackson is really at a great age for helping. This was really the first year he could actually help, we just had to work on getting each ornament on a different branch. Ha.





They really enjoyed helping... that is until Jackson had been unwrapping ornaments for quite a while and finally said 'I'm tired from this" and headed back to watch t.v. in our bed. Ha!

Once we finished up, Avery was ready and willing to take a picture in front of our tree. Jackson... not so much. 

And here is our 2015 cute little Douglas Fir all decorated.

And a picture of my little nativity set. I've had this since around 2003. I used it as a centerpiece on the table this year along with a cute little table runner that my sister made a couple years back.

So that wraps up our Christmas decorations this year. I wasn't quite sure how a tree and any of our decorations would fit in our condo, or if we'd even be able to get to our Christmas boxes in storage, but it all worked out and I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together. :-)

And just for fun, here are all of our Christmas Trees from 2007-2015!!