Christmas Preparations

December 2013

After Thanksgiving, the month of Christmas preparation began.  I hope our kids look back on these times fondly as I still do to the Christmases of my childhood - and maybe even carry a few of our family traditions on to the next generation.  Our Christmas season began with - what else? - the decorating of the Christmas tree.  As my family has done for every year I can remember, we brought home a live tree.  Daddy always has fun of getting the tree in the house, in its stand, and covered in lights:

This year, he had some help from Miss Olivia:

 

 

It has become a tradition to get an ornament each year for each kid.  This year, Jack was old enough to pick out his own.  You'll never guess what he picked? Leonardo, the Ninja Turtle, of course!  We let him pick out the perfect location on the tree:

For Livi, we picked Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street:

They had so much fun helping Mommy hang the ornaments on the tree.  This was the first year that Jack was really interested, and careful enough to hang even the most breakable ornaments:

 

Poor little Livi got a little too excited and fell in the empty box that held the lights:

My beautiful Grandma Rose moved out of the house she's lived in since before I was born and into an assisted living facility that could help keep her active and healthy.  Before her move, my Mom spent several weeks in Tennessee helping her sort through many years of memories and find homes for the important things.  We are honored to have received these 2 ornaments, which of course were placed prominently on our tree, as they will be every year from now on:

The finished product!!

Tommy also took on the job of decorating the outside of the house:

We didn't go as all out as some houses do, and the house is too tall for us to be able to put lights around the roof ourselves, but I like the way ours turned out.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but we put lights on each of the trees in front and changed our floodlights to red and green:

This year was the first year that Jack wrote a letter to Santa.  He wrote the first part himself, then followed the dotted lines that Mommy made for the latter part.  It says, "Dear Santa,  I want a ship, Ninja Turtle phone, Ninja Turtle car, Dojo Raphael.  Livi wants princesses.  Jack."

I love it that my sweet boy wanted to be sure to tell Santa what Livi wanted as well.

Our Elf on the Shelf, Betsy, returned for her second year to visit our house and report back to Santa each night leading up to Christmas morning.  They can't touch her, or she will lose her magic and not be able to fly back to Santa, but they can get close.  Here they are after finding Betsy looking out the window on the stair landing:

Betsy wasn't always as creative as some other elves, but she managed to find a new hiding place each and every morning from Thanksgiving to Christmas eve.  I documented a couple of her hiding places to show Daddy when he was out of town one week:

 

Santa came to school one day for pictures.  At first, Olivia screamed and screamed, but you would never have known it from the picture:

One Saturday, we met Nana and Papa at the Gaylord Texan.  We didn't actually walk around the ICE exhibit this time, but they have so many other fun things to do.  These giant Kung Fu Panda ice slides are one of those:

We bought a pass that allowed us 10 runs down the slides for Jack and an adult.  Mom joined him once, but mostly, this was father-son fun.  Papa managed to get a picture of them on one of their rides:

After sliding, we took a walk around the hotel.  They always decorate it so beautifully for the holidays:

We stopped for a couple of group photos:

 

And then made our way to the cafe for gingerbread men and hot chocolate.  Here's Jack with the unfortunate gingerbread man before he met his demise:

 We didn't manage to get a picture of Livi with him before he became a snack :)

Happy holidays from the Mhire family!