Trimming the Tree

The kids and Wes went to California to meet Wes' parents at his cousin's house for Thanksgiving. I had to work, but they came back that night so it was no biggie.  Then the entire Stephenson crew came for the weekend and we had a great time. I put Chris to work hanging out outside lights up.  The teenagers love doing all of that.

I had actually put our tree up the week before, but not decorated it. I was really worried about Finn pulling it over or ripping off all of the ornaments, and I thought that having it up a week before decorating it might help the novelty wear off. It worked, sort of.  But I must say Finn LOVED the Christmas tree. When we lit it up the night we put it up, he ran around pointing and saying "ohhh" at one point he even started blowing kisses to the Christmas tree, completely unprompted. He's totally going to be my little Christmas Elf.

The kids were SO SO excited to decorate the tree. One of Judy's longtime friends was coming through Reno so she stopped to visit and it happened to be while we were decorating the tree. It was a bit chaotic, but super fun. Addy insisted that she put our angel on the tree topper.  Addy got a Rapunzel ornament from me this year ( we spent many hours watching Rapunzel together this year), Finn got a Mickey Mouse ornament (because it was the theme of his first birthday party) and Liam got a Hogwarts castle ornament because he and Daddy have been reading Harry Potter together this year. They were all a hit!

We decided to make Grandma's wooden ornaments the ones to go on the bottom half of the tree because they aren't breakable. It's a good thing we did that, because even with them on the bottom, Mr. Finn still managed to break some and luckily we had super glue on hand for emergency ornament repair.  I actually ended up taking the tree down two days after Christmas because I was so tired of picking up ornaments all over the house that Finn had dispersed. ;)

Decorating the tree and sitting in a room with only the tree lights on is really one of my favorite parts of Christmas. The scene never disappoints and really fills me with the spirit of Christmas.

So here are photos of our tree and house decorating adventures!