Hauling out the Holly

In an exciting new development, I purchased an artificial tree this year!  The kids had been begging me all weekend to go that route rather than a buying a real one, and when I saw that they were on sale for half off at Michael's yesterday, I decided to give them an early Christmas present.  Hahahahaha.  I kid you not, it was like Christmas morning for Ethan when he got home from school yesterday and I directed him towards the box in the family room.  He set it up almost entirely on his own -- the others might have helped slightly -- while I started making dinner in the kitchen.  By the time Scott got home from work, we were all ready to eat and start the decorating! 

{Thankfully, Ethan had hauled up all our boxes of Christmas stuff on Sunday afternoon, so I got to sit back, relax, and snap lots of poorly lit and slightly out of focus pictures for the rest of the evening.}

The tree is pre-lit, which is pretty awesome because it's always a pain to wrap the strings of lights around the real tree, and even though it's a bit smaller than the size we usually bought at Home Depot, we still managed to squeeze all the ornaments on.  I always love seeing how excited the kids are to pull out THEIR boxes of ornaments to hang up.  After the tree was finished, we had a quick FHE lesson watching the new "He is the Gift" video that our church has put out, and then everyone was sent scampering off to bed.

{The tree may be decorated, but the rest of the house is a bit wanting in the Christmas decor department.}

I managed to live with the arrangement of the tree and the family room furniture for exactly one night before I decided something needed to change, and as the kids left for school this morning, I told them that things might be different when they came home at the end of the day.  Hahaha.  Scott working from home today worked out rather nicely as he humored my quest for feng shui at lunch time with a total rearrangement of the couches, TV, and tree to about 3 or 4 different positions before settling on the final one.  He's a keeper, that one.  :)

 {The final resting spot for the tree is now on the right side of the mantle rather than the left.}

 {We seriously need to do something about that decor!}

And finally, how could I not document my first "gift" of the season??  Grace is a generous little gift giver, even if she IS wrapping up stuff from around the house that we already have.  :)  She had a LOT of fun last night in her room wrapping up presents for everyone to have under the tree for this morning. You gotta love the holiday spirit!!