It's getting all Christmasy up in here!

I am not ashamed to say that our house started getting "Christmasy" about a month ago. I decided to decorate the outside while it was still warm and I just wouldn't turn them on until Thanksgiving. So, when it was 70 degrees I hung the icicle lights and wrapped the porch posts with lit garland. Then, on Thanksgiving night I turned all the lights on together and half of our icicle lights flashed and half didn't. (Yes, I checked them all before I hung them. But, I needed to open some new ones I had bought on sale years ago since Nathan shot some out with a BB gun last year. So, I plugged them in to check them and they don't flash immediately when they are plugged in so I just hung them up with the others).  So, over the weekend, when it was a cool 50 degrees I got the pleasure of taking them all down and rehanging new ones - which I was 3 feet short of thanks to my husbands lovely measurements - so I still had to use some old ones for that part, which hung longer than the new ones so they had to be rigged up. But, it is all done now and looks good to me!

The weekend before Christmas we found ourselves all in Russellville together and decided to go ahead and get our tree since we were all there and we would be really busy the next few weekends. It was really easy - we all agreed on the first tree we saw, well except for Ryan. She said she didn't like it because it wasn't decorated ;) It is a good thing she is pretty ;) Daddy got the tree in the stand and then I put the lights on it. I let the kids help a lot more with the decorations this year and that was a tough one. I cannot count how many ornaments were dropped, luckily none were broken. They put three or four on the very end of one limb and it really tried my patience. I wanted them to have happy Christmas tree decorating memories but I am not sure that will be what they remember. 

Ready to decorate!

Our lights go from color....

to white! The best of both worlds!

They are really all about the tree this year. Every day they talk about how good it smells and even rub on it to make themselves smell good :)  I don't buy ornaments except the ones we each get each year. This year Noah got Batman, Ryan got Draculara, I got a glass ball with a snowflake in it and Nathan got a National Lampoons Christmas Vacation one. So far, we can get away with only decorating the front of our tree, but in a few more years we will have to start shunning some to the back . We hung stockings and put out a few other little decorations, but that is it - I keep it pretty simple. 

After Christmas last year I used my Christmas cash to buy wreaths and snowflakes to put in the upstairs windows across the front of the house. I love how they turned out. The last of our Christmas decorations is our inflatables. We have the giant T-Rex for Noah and the Santa driving the dozer for Nathan - those our the big ones we are putting in the yard this year. On the porch is Ryan's Minnie Mouse and Olaf. Last is my cute little Polar Bear on the log bench.

Last but not least we cannot forget our elves Huckleberry and Merida and their reindeer Owlette and Batman :) They always come back on Thanksgiving night and fly into the tree with their jackets on. Thanks to the internet and a reminder on my phone it has been pretty easy to remember to move them and to have creative ideas for them. Some people are anti-elves but we love them. It is so fun to see the kids faces when they find what silly thing they have done.