Tree Up

We're only 9 days in to December and I got the tree up finally.  The kids have been waiting patiently as I spent a couple of weeks with pretty much no time to do anything.  Tonight I found to be the perfect moment to pull down the tree and the Christmas decorations from the little shelf they sit on in the garage.  The kids were absolutely thrilled and did a fabulous job decorating.  Natty is the best at fluffing up the fake tree branches and the boys can hang ornaments like no tomorrow.  As usual most of those ornaments stay toward the lower front and sided of the tree with just about nothing making it to the back.  Natty did a great job managing that as well and did her best to evenly distribute up and down the tree.  She also managed to get a few around the back.  I did the fun job of pulling out ornaments individually, looking at whose name was written on it, the date and then telling them how old they were when they got that particular ornament.  One was a little canoe with two figures paddling away.  It was Jack's ornament from 2005.  He was 20 months old then.  It was pretty funny, he got a little emotional about it and happily put it on the tree.  Everyone had a good time. 

Two other things came out with the tree, well, a lot more than two decoration wise but tradition wise there were two other Christmas traditions launched today as well.  Christmas music being the first.  Actually, we should really refer to this as Jingle Bells by BNL.  The kids go crazy over this song and have for years.  They will run, jump and dance the entire time and then ask for it to be played over and over again.  We listened at least a half dozen times tonight and there will be more listening everyday throughout the month. 

The next tradition is our reading of a favorite Christmas story every night.  Tonight we read The Christmas Mystery.  It too is a favorite.  I did manage to break from one part of that tradition tonight... I made it through without crying.  Sweet. 

It is nice to have the tree up and the sounds and feelings of Christmas brought to life, especially with the kids.