Ready for Christmas

The kids have been looking forward to Christmas since Halloween. Things have slowed down again with fall sports ending and no school. There’s not a lot going on and we don’t go many places. We finish the outside decorations right after Thanksgiving and they were convinced we needed to start right in on the inside decorations. Yesterday Ellie and Clair helped clean the house because they know first come to cleaning before the decorations can come out. David had brought up all of the Christmas decoration bins from the basement up the stairs and so they were very easy access for the girls.

Ellie was quite the little Christmas elf. She did put many things in the places and in the ways that I do them, but then she went on to be creative and insisted every decoration that I have downstairs be used.

We didn’t have time to bake a pie, which is apparently required in this house before decorating the tree, on Sunday. So tree decorating was pushed today. I was lucky to get done work at a reasonable time so I had time to bake the homemade apple pie as well as string 1000 lights onto the tree.

Ellie was extremely helpful with the pie baking as well as making dinner. Without her help I don’t think we would’ve gotten it all done today. 

The kids do really enjoy decorating the Christmas tree. I’m happy that they’ve gotten into the tradition of really appreciating where each ornament came from. They hear me tell the same stories every year and continually ask me mommy do you remember where this ones from? I love that.

This year I saw her let them go through a lot of the decorations themselves. I did hang up several of my most cherished ornaments. The ones I find I cherish the most came from my grandma and grandpa either given to me as a kid or as a hand me down from their Christmas trees. I love the old metal bulbs that have such unique shapes to them. The kids really enjoy that my mom continued the tradition and had given them each a new ornament every Christmas. They like to find them in the boxes and reminisce about when they got them. Ellie has nearly received the entire 12 days of Christmas. She loves putting them all together in one place on the tree. Tonight she even made a video showing the progress of tree decorating. I’m looking forward to seeing that when completed.

I took only about an hour to get all the decorations on. Then it was time for pie. During decorating we listen to Kenny and Dolly sing their Christmas album. I did throw in a little Frank Sinatra Christmas after the third round of Kenny and Dolly CD. 

I do see some of these traditions taking hold in the children’s minds and I am really grateful for that. I started to talk to them about ornaments that I want each of them to have when the time comes. I hope they enjoy this tradition with their children to.

I didn’t take many pictures this year but here are a few that I did crap. Ellie had to help me figure out how to use my phone camera as the settings have changed and I couldn’t find the flash for the past month. Teenagers are great for helping with technology!