Christmas Preparations

I was proud to be somewhat on the ball early for Christmas this year, yet as usual, the week before Christmas was still a little out of control.  Here are some of our Christmas preparations.  I’ve literally never seen Josiah so excited as when we were decorating!  He was jumping up and down talking so quickly that we had no idea what he was saying half the time.  He kept begging to put up more decorations even when we had no more.

The ornament he is reaching for bit the dust pretty early on :)  It was Elijah’s favorite.  I kept hanging it up higher, but kept finding it lower.

Daddy and Josiah after putting the star on the tree.  Notice there are hardly any ornaments up there?  That’s what happens when short people decorate a tree!

He kept rearranging the tree.  He loved to collect all the similar ornaments and then hang them all in the same area.  He’s an organizer at heart.

While Josiah enjoyed rearranging the ornaments (notice all these stars in one place?), Elijah just liked to steal the ornaments to play with.  I realize most people teach the kids not to touch the tree, but they enjoyed it so much and I figured that was the point, after all.  This is the time of their lives to enjoy every aspect of Christmas.

     These reindeer antlers were a hit!

Every year I have visions of getting family pictures done for Christmas to send out as cards.  I decided to do it this year and opted to do it myself because I figured that would require the least amount of patience on the part of all three of my boys.  Well, things got crazy and it seemed we could never get it together during decent weather/lighting outside and once we did finally do it (when it was almost dark) I never got around to doing anything with them.  So, here they are.  My best failed efforts.

Josiah was a ham!

Elijah was a crab and the only decent pictures I could get of him were him playing horsey on the split rail fence and with Jacob tickling him.“Look, Mama, the North Star!”