Embracing Christmas

Some of you who know me well know that Christmas isn't my favorite time of year. The dark. The cold. The abject materialism. They all get to me. But children have a tendency to pull you outside of yourself a little so I've been making an effort to embrace Christmas for Aiden's sake (Devin doesn't much care yet). Aiden still doesn't really "get" the whole giving and receiving of gifts yet (no surprise since his mother still doesn't understand the whole thing) for which we are quite grateful. But he understands the Christmas tree and that Santa is someone of interest. So here is my first attempt at embracing the holiday...

A TREE!


We went out last week and got a 5' tree and decided to put it in the kitchen to keep it out of the way of kids and birds. With our high ceilings we could have gotten a good 8' tree and not even scratched the ceiling but 5' seemed tall enough (you don't need a ladder to trim a 5' tree).

We've been slowly adding lights and candy canes to the bare limbs (don't want to rush things). And today we finally added ornaments!

Devin's first Christmas ornament


Hmmm... Who could this ornament be for???


A gift from my mom to celebrate our new home


My favorite childhood ornament


In the first tree picture you can't even tell the lights are on because of the brightness of the room. But after a few tries I got a nice picture of the tree lit up in the dark. Kind of pretty!