Christmas Setup

We LOVE setting up the Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving each year. When the big kids were really small, we just set up the tree and other decorations after they were all in bed. But now that they are older, we do it as a family (usually for Family Home Evening). The kids love helping, and this year Mitchell was especially anxious to get them up. We went out of town for Thanksgiving weekend and upon pulling up into our cul de sac this past Sunday night, he noticed that almost every single one of our neighbors had some sort of Christmas decoration up. He immediately hollered, "Mom! Why don't we have our Christmas stuff up? Everyone else does!" I tried to explain that we didn't have ours up yet since we were out of town. He pestered me about putting them up all the next day too, promising he'd help with everything.

Monday night, he held true to his promise.

Everyone helped Ben "fluff" the branches on the tree.

We have 2 sets of grandparents and a set of great grandparents that give the kids a new ornament each year and being a date obsessed person, I label the child's name and the year they received the ornament, and who it was from, somewhere inconspicuous on the ornament so we can look back and remember who's is who and how old they were when they got it. You would have thought it was Christmas morning already with how the kids reacted as Ben handed them ornaments to decorate the tree with. They were thrilled as they inspected each ornament and discovered which ornaments were theirs and which grandparent (or sometimes parents) gave it to them.

The kids were especially excited to be handed an old ornament of mine or Ben's that we had as children.

Mitchell found an ornament with a picture of Ben as a boy and was convinced that it was him.

The babies loved hanging ornaments.

They also love taking them off and playing with them.

After the lights were put on and all the ornaments hung, Chloe got to top the tree with an angel ornament we found among our collection. In our 8 years of marriage, we have never invested in a nice, special angel tree topper. That is on my list to do for next year.

I love seeing a lit, decorated tree for an entire month. I'm anxious for Christmas to be here, but don't want December to go by too quickly. A Christmas decorated house is one of my favorite things in the entire world.

As we were cleaning up, Mitch found the empty Christmas tree box and hid in it. Leah found him.

He fit, with plenty of room to spare.

Last year, our "Elf on the Shelf", Nicky, came to our house for the first time. The kids have been asking for over a week when Nicky will come back. I kept telling them that I guessed it would be soon.

This morning, the kids came downstairs to finds Nicky, a note and a gift on the kitchen table.

They had enough self control to wait until the babies were awake and until I came downstairs to open the gift. I was impressed. And Chloe was able to read the entire note to everyone. (I love having another reader in the house!)

A group effort in opening the gift found a new Wii console. Our Wii has been broken for about a year and we have missed it. Ben set it up before leaving for work and the kids played Mario Kart while I made breakfast. As Nicky said in the note, this early Christmas gift is to help remind the kids to be good this month, as he reports their behavior to Santa every night when he returns to the North Pole. Here's to hoping it works!