:: preparing for festivities::

Wow, I feel like I haven't posted in weeks, and it's only really been three days. Well I'm sure everybody missed me, so I'm back. Phew.
Max and I spent this week trying to get ready for Christmas.
Kris and I had brought the tree up from the basement a few days before thanksgiving because we had to rearrange our living room. Our nice big flatscreen TV that we bought back in Kansas City died. Just suddenly conked out when Max was in the middle of an important PBS show. There was still sound but no picture. We took it to a repair place and they wanted $750 to fix it. Hah.
So luckily we had a small TV we were using in our room. We moved that out to the living room and rearranged the rest of the room around the tree.

And the tree sat there as just a naked tree until a couple of days after thanksgiving. That's when I found the star and put it on top. Then it sat there as just a tree with a star for like three more days until I finally got the lights up. And of course the lights were sitting in a box at the foot of the tree all that time. At least I finally did it.

Then lighted and starred the tree was ready for some ornaments. Kris didn't mind that Max and I worked on it while he was at work, so we got started the other day.

It's so fun to open up the ornament boxes.

Sometimes I forget what fun stuff I have until I hang the stuff on top and get down to the next layer of tissue paper and ornaments. It's magical.
And yes, that's a spoon in there. It's not misplaced. It's an antique spoon from Silver City, UT. If you have questions about it just ask Kris's dad. He's the guy that gave it to us!


I have a separate box for some of the more delicate stuff. Some of it didn't come out this year. We're once again on a hard wood floor, and with a 4 yr old and a dog I just don't want anything shattered on the floor.

Last year I did a lot of after christmas shopping. I usually don't like to do that because it's kind of anti-climactic. But I loved it this time. Going through my boxes it was like I had a whole bunch of new stuff I didn't remember. And getting things at 50 or 75% didn't hurt. I'm going to do it again this year.

Max was the most concerned about finding his sock monkey ornament. Remember that guy? Kris's mom bought it for us several years ago (with amazing foresight), before the sock monkey craze at our house started. Then last year when he came out of the box Max almost lost his mind. The sock monkey had a little friend!
So he was really excited to see the baby monkey again.
Sock monkey even got to come out for the occasion, and he hasn't been out much lately.

He doesn't look that excited in this picture, but that's just because I kept telling him to hold still.

This one is much better.

I have so many fun and sentimental and awesome ornaments. I think later this month I may do a post and highlight some of them. Many of them come from my mom and are handmade. They're such treasures.
Here's one of my favorites. It's not from my mom, it's from Kris. It's Kris's valiant effort at an ornament for my parent's annual christmas party/ornament exchange.

I think it's so adorable. And he was so brave. Can you tell what it is? It's Santa orbiting a planet on a sled of course. And poor Santa is looking a little the worse for wear. It's been 8 years he's been orbiting.
Anyway, I love this little guy. It reminds me of good times and how much my husband loves me!

It was fun to decorate with Max. He's actually getting big enough to help with something like this and stick to it for a while, and big enough that I'm not worried he's going to eat or break anything I give him. I did have to do a lot of adjusting though. It seemed like he wanted to hang every single thing I gave him in the same spot. There was a huge clump of stuff down at the bottom when he got done. But we fixed it.


I'll post the a picture of the whole tree later. And maybe some individual ornaments. But how can I choose which ones?