Decorating for Christmas!

As wonderful of a holiday as Halloween is, even I know there is a time to take down the pumpkins and witches! (The only reason I can say that is because I now have my Halloween laundry room year round :)) We sort of skipped the entire month of November. Most holidays I think that you can skip the decorating if life throws you a curve ball, but not Christmas. Especially when you have little kids. I always dread the end of Halloween because I have to take down all of the fun stuff but I decided that since we were well into the first week of December and I could go straight into my lights and Nativities I thought it would be okay. So yesterday was the day. We decided we would attempt the outside first. While I set out all of the cutesy things on the ground Craig worked on the house lights. Things went relatively smooth with the biggest mishap being that all of the little plastic hooks for the lights to hang from the rain gutters were snapping in two, luckily we had extras to spare. The outside only took about 2.5 hours. Then we came inside and the festivities began. My mom and dad came over to watch us set up the Christmas tree since they won't be doing one of their own this year. The girls played Christmas songs on the piano as we got the tree set up and all of the lights on. Then we let the kids put all of the ornaments on. Sari did a pretty good job of getting them to the top, Tyler did an excellent job of getting the bottom decorated, and Ashlie seemed to focus on the side that faced the window. I managed to get a couple of pictures of Sari and Tyler, Ashlie gets plenty of other pictures posted so I think she'll survive. I managed to get a couple of Craig atop the roof putting up the lights on the second story. Most of the lights he can reach from the roof of the first floor but there is one peak over the entry that he had to get from the top of the 2nd story. A bit alarming for me but he did it with no stories to tell :) After we got the tree set up it was time to get ready for our Christmas party so I elected to save my nativities for today so I could take my time and get them perfect. It was a perfect Sunday afternoon activity. I also included a picture of Ginger wearing the reindeer antlers from the Christmas parade. Needless to say she wasn't too excited.