Our Christmas Tree

After all the Tree lighting festivities outside were finished and everyone was in bed, I rearranged the furniture in our living room, trying to find a way to make room by the front window for the tree. I spent more time then I'm willing to admit on moving our couch, love seat and an arm chair around the room, only to come with the conclusion that there's no way to make room for the tree by the window without removing the love seat from the room, which wasn't an option. I went to bed thinking that at least I tried.. In the morning, everyone in the house was laughing at me, because all of the furniture was back in the regular spots except for the arm chair. Sigh.

Yesterday we spent a good part of the day setting up and decorating our Christmas tree. This is the biggest, fullest tree we've ever had! It smells amazing and looked really beautiful even without any decorations! While the kids nap, I put up the lights on tree. Typically I'd wrap every tree branch with lights (Last year our tree had 3,000 lights!). This process takes about 8 hours and at the end I need a day or two to recover from the back and shoulder pain.. This year, I went with a simpler approach, I ran strands of lights up and down the tree until it looked like it had enough lights on it. I was a little skeptical, but I think it came out alright :) Ashley was really into decorating the tree this year. She put unbreakable ornaments all on the bottom, so that it's safe for Katelyn, and then helped me with the glass ones.

We usually hang our stockings over the fireplace in the family room, but since Katelyn is such a trouble maker, we decided to put our stockings on the railing above the piano this year. All our indoor Christmas decorations have to be 100% baby proof. If there's a way, Katelyn will find it and try to eat it and if doesn't take good, she'll destroy it, so a preemptive strike is the best approach for us this year to keep our house festive and safe for all :)

Here is a picture of our tree all done, minus the tree topper, it was too high to reach without a ladder and we didn't want to disturb Katelyn with the noise since she was already in bed.