The decorations go up...

Since we were heading to Oregon for Thanksgiving this year, we decided to put up the Christmas tree before we left so when we came home, it was Christmas! We wanted to get the decorations up too but yeah...didn't happen until we got home.

But I love our tree. One day I'll have "MY" tree, with all the gorgeous ornaments in my special front room on display. But this is our tree. And every time we get the ornaments out, I totally remember where I got (most) of them and the really special ones. Some of my favorite ones are: the zapatista (rebel from Chiapas Mexico) that comes with a gun! Our big gigantic snowman star (see picture below), Our nativity shooting star made of Rimu from NZ and a few other precious ones. Sometimes I think the ornaments don't really stand out against our tree but that's okay, it's still beautiful to us!

This is the result of the kids decorating. 2 ornaments on one branch! SO AWESOME! :)

Both of the kids putting the first ornaments on.

Charlotte mesmerized by the lights.

I'm SO excited for Christmas this year. Charlotte's is remembering all these things that we did last year. She remembers the M&Ms that go in the snowman plate, the advent calendars with chocolate in them and other things. And she is the one that loves to move the snowman along on the calendar too! And Jack is just talking about cwismas trees, cwismas lights, snowman,sanna claus, reindeer! I asked what he wanted to do today and he said he wanted to make cookies! We're going to have so much fun this season! And that we'll be really able to show and tell them the true meaning of Christmas.