Trimming the Tree

For family night this week we ended up decorating the tree. Half of me loves putting up the tree and the other half hates it. Love it because it's fun to look at and it helps the excitement of the Christmas season begin when you pull out all the ornaments and the lights. The part of me that hates it always says, "How many ornaments are we going to break THIS year?" I lost track of how many ornaments got broken last Christmas season there were so many. And it wasn't Chase's fault. Chase insists that it was Superman that broke our ornaments. His large Superman action figure "flew" into the Christmas tree I don't know how many times sending glass shards of ornaments flying in every direction. Bad Superman. He saves people. He should know better than to fly into people's Christmas trees. And then there was the dinosaur. Again - it wasn't Chase's fault. That plastic toy dinosaur just "stomp, stomped down our stairs and jumped into our Christmas tree!" How rude.

So the tree has been up for two days now and so far we have 1 broken ornament. It was Craig's favorite. A Star Wars Starfighter Jet with R2D2 on the wing. When you push the button on it it makes Star Wars shooting noises. A pretty cool ornament. You'll never guess who broke it? Well, it wasn't Chase.
But if you ask Chase he'll tell you, "The jet just fell down off the Christmas tree and the wings broke off and went like this (he takes his two index fingers holding them close together and as he describes what happened to the wings when the jet "fell" from the tree, his fingers get farther and farther apart from each other in an outward motion.) Wow! Our Starfighter Jet took some fall!! If you ask Chase WHY the Starfighter Jet "fell" off the Christmas tree he will tell you that Clark (our little 13-month old) SHOOK our (7 and a half foot tall) Christmas tree causing the jet to fall from it's branch. Silly Clark. . . . .Christmas trees aren't for shaking!

Not to mention Clark is afraid of the Christmas tree. We were putting the tree up and he crawled underneath it and started screaming! I think the needles were poking him in the face. He freaked out and hasn't gone near it since. Which is a good thing. I really thought we were going to have some major problems with him wanting to play with the tree/ornaments/lights. Hopefully he stays afraid of it. We'll see if he gets more and more brave the longer it's up. I just hope we don't have anymore "shaking" incidences. . . . . :)

So getting out the tree and decorations was fun. We turned on some Christmas music and pulled all the boxes out. As always, the kids had a blast playing in the boxes!

Clark had fun taking the ornaments out:
Chase and Mallory hung them on the tree:
And Mallory got the honors of putting the angel on top this year:
We have loved having a fireplace here! Craig was excited that we have a mantle to hang stockings from. It's something he had as a child. Chase picked out the stocking holders. It makes a Christmas train. I LOVE the stockings! I got them on clearance last year at Target. They're velvet and the initial is in rhinestones. They have little tassels coming out the top too.
We've enjoyed the start of our Christmas season. And for once. . . . . it actually FEELS like Christmas! Baby, it's cold outside!