Puttin' up the Christmas Tree

The Monday after Thanksgiving, we decided to take advantage of Jeremiah being home early and put up our Christmas Tree for Family Home Evening. Usually we get a real tree and wait until a couple weeks before Christmas to put it up (we have a hard time remembering to water it and we're lucky if it lasts long enough to make it until Christmas). A couple of years ago we inherited an artificial Christmas Tree from my sister and used it last year - it was so nice not having to worry about watering it and all the pine needles all over the carpet! So we decided this year we'd use it again since we wanted to put it up so early. We made the mistake of telling the kids what we were doing before dinner because all they could think about before and during dinner was putting up the Christmas Tree. You would have thought we'd filled them up on straight sugar with the way they were bouncing off the walls!

Finally we gave up and decided to let them be done. While I cleared the table and the kitchen cleaned, Jeremiah began setting up the tree. The kids ran around excited and poor Tate just sat there watching all the excitement. Once the tree was up, we began putting on the lights. Every year we realize how nice those prelit trees are! Zach and Hailey did the unraveling and Jeremiah did the placing on the tree.


Of course we had the traditional, get all the lights on the tree and discover one of them is burnt out (this happens to us every year, you'd think we'd check before we put them on the tree wouldn't you - nope, not us!). Luckily for us this year, it was the last strand, so it didn't take much time to replace.

Next we moved on to decorating with ornaments. The kids love to place the ornaments on the tree.


I have to help them just a bit to get the right place or we'd have all the ornaments on the center lower half of the tree!


Jeremiah and Tate took their position on the rocking chair and Tate went back and forth between playing with his octopus and squealing at the kids.


Once we got the Angel Moroni on the top, it sure looked nice. The kids wanted to take a quick picture in front.


While Jeremiah and the kids were putting on the lights, Tate and I were busy pulling out the rest of the tree decorations. At the bottom, I found this little Santa hat I bought back when Zach was a baby. I think we've taken pictures of the kids with it when they've been babies, so we couldn't forget to get one of Tate in the hat. He was in a pretty happy mood, so I got quite a few of him smiling.


I also wanted one of the three kids together, so I made them sit still long enough to grab a quick couple of pictures. They wanted Tate to wear the Santa hat and it turned into a cute little picture.


They sure do love their little brother!


It sure was a fun night and we all had a great time getting the tree up and decorated! Now we're all feeling in the Christmas Spirit and can't wait for Christmas to get here!