Christmas is Coming!!

We spent last Sunday and Monday getting our house ready for Christmas. It took two days this year as we had two trees to put up. Ah yes, I am following in my Mother's footsteps. (Although I have promised Jacob that I will never make him do three trees) Jacob found a great tree at a garage sale last summer for $3.00. He bought it thinking to replace our smaller tree. I was so excited when he brought it home to realize that I could now have two trees.

It was the perfect year to start the two tree tradition as we now have two rooms for Christmas trees. We put the "new to us" tree in the living room and decorated it with the matching ornaments, ribbon, and white lights. How we got all of these matching decorations is a quirky story.

When I was pregnant with Spencer the company that I worked for announced that it would be closing its doors. My boss and I were responsible to go through all of the assets and account for each as we sold them. When we got to the end of the list we realized we still had a few things in the storage shed that hadn't been accounted for. This included the Christmas Decorations for the tree they put in the lobby each year. As it was never listed as an asset it wasn't required to go in the "sale" pile of assets that had been sold to another company. And wham, suddenly I inherited a beautiful set of ornaments to decorate my own Christmas tree. And all I had to do was lose my job :) I also got a cool office tree (one of those fake ones) but it never made the move.

So this "new to us tree" and "new to us decorations" now makes up my "formal" Christmas tree. I love it. I can't tell you how happy I am not to have Homer Simpson hanging on my beautiful Christmas tree. I can't wait for the after Christmas sells. I would like to get a few more of the really nice ornaments for my formal tree, just for some variety, but I can't bring myself to pay for them at the before Christmas prices when I know they will be going 50% - 75% off after and it really looks great now so it is definitely something that can wait.

So where is Homer now? We set up our old tree in the family room and even bought (shocker I know) some colored lights and a few more glass balls for it. (the ornaments where a little thin now that they are divided between two trees, I love that Dollar Tree.) The tree turned out great and it is so fun to see all of the handmade ornaments that the kids have made. Although I think next year we won't be putting candy canes on it as I keep finding them stuffed in my couch cushions, broken in half with one bite out of them. Thanks Kristian.

All in all, it turned out to be more fun to set up our Christmas stuff then it has been in the past. Spencer was much more of a help this year and all of the kids really seemed to get into the process more. The kids get so excited each morning to take another mini ornament out of the advent calendar and they plug in the Christmas lights any time they are in the room. It is just fun to see them so caught up in the Christmas Spirit.