Christmasy Things

Although our tree technically went up the day after Thanksgiving, we hadn't decorated. It's artificial and prelit, and my dear husband humored me and put it up so that I could take a picture of the kids in front of it for our Christmas card. And then, with our tree up, we (finally) got our living room painted, which I'll post about elsewhere. Now, our tree is almost decorated.

Decorating and having a pajama day.

Yes, Jonathan is quite the decorator. The candy canes change locations every few minutes. He keeps talking about hiding them and then having a candy cane hunt. (He may have his holidays a bit confused, but he's enjoying himself!)

More candy cane decorating and wearing a crown from Awana.

Here's a tradition we've started this year that we love and will hopefully continue each year. At the end of November, Jonathan and I collected our books about Christmas wherever they had landed since last year. I wrapped them up and stacked them together. He's been anxious to open them! Each day in December, we open a book and read it together. (We usually end up reading it several times before the day is over.) Here we are reading Mary Engelbreit's Queen of Christmas that my mom gave to me for my birthday in 2005. That was his favorite book today. Yesterday it was The Jolly Christmas Postman that Todd and Corinne gave to him in 2008. I love this new tradition. What's better than the excuse to read books together...and under the tree, too? And it's building our anticipation for Christmas...not that we needed any more. I love Christmas.