Its Beginning to Look...

A lot like Christmas at our house!! Christmas is easily my favorite holiday. Not only for the obvious Reason, but I just love the ambiance of the lights and some of my favorite memories are from Christmases past. I could spend a fortune on decorations :) and I coerce Aaron into putting up lights outside every year. I cannot even fathom not having lights up outside! I guess I come by it naturally if you've ever seen my parents' house! This will be the most challenging year to decorate-with 3 little ones, one who requires a LOT of Mommy (he thinks he's starving after an hour!!) and two big kids who want to help, but then they don't, but then they do... :) And of course not having all my energy back yet. But I'll get it done...for the most part anyway!
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It's Beginning to Look...

...a lot like Christmas around here!!! We finally got our tree, lights and decorations up today! There's still the aftermath to clean up. But the lights are beautiful and the kids love it all.

I thought Anna would be more into helping me decorate the tree, but they both got sidetracked with the tree box. As always...the boxes are more fun than the toys! :) Jacob was peeking through a hole and giggling like crazy while Anna meowed at him.

Then she would pop out and they would both shout with glee!

The tree:) Yes, the star is crooked...I tried forever to get it straight! I switched over to white lights this year and I really like it. I wasn't thinking and picked up white lights on white strands. At first I thought it would look bad, but I kinda like it. Makes it even brighter. It's possible that I put 7 strands of lights on the tree:D I am my mother's daughter!

I also got some new blue and silver ornaments. And I decided to try wrapping the tree in ribbon. I really like it.

Aunt Cheryl made this for Jacob. He found it right away and he loves it! :)

It's a bit blurry, but our decorations on the bookshelf. Finally have a place/use for those crystal hurricane glasses! (they're on the top shelf...I put beads and cinnamon-scented pine cones in them)

My Willow Tree nativity set. My in-laws have given me a few pieces every year for Christmas. I think last year was the final 'installment' (except for the creche (is that how you spell that??) which I told them to wait on til I have a mantle to put it on!). I love Willow Tree. And although the kids are NOT to play with it, it's nice that they're not porcelain or glass so if they do (and I don't see it) they won't easily break!

Our outside lights...I thought the B/W was kinda cool looking.

You can't see our tree through the front windows this year b/c of how our living room is arranged now. Aaron braved the roof to put up the icicle lights and I did the colored lights on the porch. I understand why people spend extra money for lights that when one bulb goes out the whole strand doesn't go out!!! Good grief. I musta spent at least 45 min. trying to figure out which bulb was out on which strand to get them all working. I just gave up and went with what was working already. Grrrr!!!

Again, Dollar General! :) I glued 2 bows together. One of these days I'll have a wreath on my door, but until then... :)

So now I have a DISASTER to clean up...but not til tomorrow!

I found it!

The camera, not my mind! ha Mom, you were right--it was under the couch!! I'd looked under the front of the couch, but not the ends.

So the other day we put up the tree. Anna was very excited. She handed me all the branches (yes, we have a fake tree) and then brought me all the lights. Finally she got to put the decorations on! She actually did a really good job. I told her to spread them out and put them on different branches. I skipped all the glass bulb ornaments this year and put the pretty, breakable ones up top. After we finished (and that had to be in the dark b/c she wanted to see the lights!), Anna went up to the tree, 'hugged' it and said "Tree, I love you.......lights, I love you too" It was so precious. And then...

She pulled her rocking chair out, sat down in front of the tree and just rocked. The lights are quite mesmerizing! We had to wait a day to get a new star for the top...our old one wasn't working and I wasn't about to try and figure out which bulb inside it was burnt out!

Surprisingly, Jacob has done really good with the tree! I put a couple bells on the bottom branches and he'll just play with those. He gets a little rough, but he really doesn't touch anything else (I hope I'm not jinxing myself!!!!!). I am honestly completely shocked. I was invisioning great destruction!

On to Thanksgiving, round 2, in Kansas :)
For Mom's side, we went to Aunt Cara & Uncle Terry's new house for a soup supper! It was really fun and Cara just loved being the hostess (I think she sat for 15 min. the entire evening!!) :)

Daddy gave Hudson (my nephew) a cool 'do :) He's such a cute baby and almost always smiles at you (even in the middle of a cry sometimes!).

My cousins, Raylinn and Heather, gladly entertained Anna for the night. It really doesn't seem that long ago that I was doing the same with them as itty bitty girls!

Aunt Cara loves irises and wanted an iris picture to hang in her front room. Mom searched high & low to find one with no luck. I kept telling her to just paint one for Cara. She finally did and MAN! She did an awesome job!!! I am just so in awe of her ability to paint such beautiful pictures. It's incredible. This is how good she is--nobody knew she'd painted it until we told them to look at the signature! Cara was so surprised and so happy. Of course, we were all so focused on keeping her distracted enough (wasn't hard, we just asked her about her new house;)), that we forgot to get our cameras out and ready for the initial reaction!! There were a few tears!


For Dad's side, we had a big, huge meal with a whole bunch of people (anybody know the final count?) at Uncle Alan & Aunt Donna's house. It was fun, except my kids were sick, tired, and CRANKY! My aunt Carolyn brought her little puppies and let's just say they were a HIT with my kids!

Jacob was so funny! He was delighted and let us know with his priceless face and squeal of delight! :)

Anna was in love from the second she saw them.

She was SO EXCITED to ride up to "the hill" to get the big truck with Papa!!

Even though it was FREEZING (and the first snow!!!), she was ready to go and believe you me, if anyone even whispered the words "the hill" she heard and was going with you!

So there you have it. Our 2nd round of Thanksgiving. Anna's neck is finally back to normal I think, but nobody is sleeping very good yet :( I'm praying tonight is a better night. I don't know what time Aaron came out and woke me up last night--I was asleep sitting on the floor leaning against the couch (with my mouth hanging open, I do believe!). Evidently at some point Anna left and got in our bed! Good grief, we are so sleep deprived it's not EVEN funny!