Finally Decorated

Well after another hectic week, the kids finally put the ornaments on the tree this week! I hope we can figure out something that works out earlier next year, honestly. However, it's up, with ornaments and lights and the kids are happy. 

Watching Lily's face every. single. time. the lights are turned on is totally worth it. She's enamored and in awe each time! I love it.

So far only one ornament has been pulled off and it's non-breakable, so that's a win!

One thing I really love is that Andrew and Reagan are happy to put all the ornaments on (with a little guidance of breakables) and we have this smorgasboard of memories on our trees.

Nothing matchy matchy.

Just history. 

We still put many of mine and Andrew's ornaments before we met George and Reagan and many of theirs before us. And then of course, ornaments we've collected during our life together. It's a perfect representation of all of us. 

We upgraded to colored LED lights this year that are bigger and we all really like them. I wasn't so sure about them because I tend to stick with not changing what works and I really love traditional colored lights. If I could get away with it, I'd have those big colored bulbs from when we were kids on the tree!  But, the LED bulbs are pretty and adding in purple makes for something new that I think is pretty too.

Lily woke up from her afternoon nap crankypants, so she wasn't as thrilled about the decorating as we'd hoped, but still managed to participate.

Trying to capture pictures of the 3 of them together with an on-the-go, mind of her own toddler has become increasingly difficult. At least Reag's a good sport! Andrew too. hahaha!

5 years

After writing about picking out our Christmas tree yesterday, I decided to look back at the previous years since we've lived in Pittsburgh.  I discovered that I was wrong about our first Christmas together.  We used my husband's pitiful fake Christmas tree that first year. Then we moved on to our live tree tradition.

I showed Andrew this first picture and he said, "We look so LITTLE!"

I do love this tradition we've created together!  O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree...how lovely are thy branches...

Picking Out the Tree

The last few weeks have been fraught with one thing after another during the week and since Reagan is only with us weekdays, we have to make sure we continue family traditions during the week this year. The kids have had a lot going on with Scouts and Brownies too, and also Andrew's band concert and rehearsals.

This week we were finally were able to go and pick out our Christmas tree!

Lily is thrilled to just walk everywhere, so she roamed around checking out the tree selection.

 George and Andrew held up a few that we'd narrowed it down to. Andrew yelled out that he was the star.



Doesn't Andrew look absolutely thrilled to be holding up the tree? 

The kids accomodate my picture taking well...always.  I love being able to compare previous years to see how much the kids have grown and changed. We've been going to the same lot for our tree since 2007, when Andrew and I moved here.  My husband accomodates my desire for a live tree since I didn't have one growing up in Arizona despite being allergic to pine.  Love him!

Well almost always....

Finally we found what we were looking for!

2011

Now to decorate....

Deck the Halls!

We were finally able to decorate our Christmas tree last night...FINALLY all of us home together...2 weeks after picking out the tree.  For the last 2 weeks, we've enjoyed the smell of our tree. With Reagan being at her mom's a few extra days last week, George going out of town, Andrew's band concert, and of course work schedules, we found ourselves with a blank slate tree for 2 weeks.

Yesterday was the day!

George does the lights...inside and out.

The kids do the ornaments...

This year we had Lily help a little too ♥

Then she hung out underneath while we decorated. :)

~We also had a surprise at home yesterday...

Andrew and Reagan were playing with Legos, Lily was napping, and George and I were relaxing --typical Saturday in the winter. We heard a siren outside --which was kinda strange because we live on a dead end street at the top of a hill and don't get much traffic.

George looked outside and lo and behold...SANTA!

He came to visit!

What a fun surprise!