Decked Out

After an extremely busy Saturday morning (voice lesson, guitar lesson, basketball game, grocery shopping) we came home and spent the afternoon and evening as a family and had a fantastic time.  We started out with our pre-Christmas tree decorating tradition of baking cookies.  The kids had a blast decorating them.

And eating them......

And Talan was very sweet in wanting to share all of his with Daddy. 

After quite a bit of preparation (carrying up all of the boxes from the basement, stringing lights on the tree, organizing the hundreds of contents from inside of said boxes) we were finally ready to get started.  But not before we posed for a family picture.

We had two serious photos and the other 20 we took turned out a lot like this one:

And this one:

Time to pop bottles.....of sparkling apple cider, that is:

After the quick break for refreshments, it was time for ornaments:

Previous to this year, Reese has always put the tree topper on.  We figured since Talan is still young, he probably wouldn't know the difference so it can be Reese's job one last year.  Next year we'll start alternating.

Uh, he noticed.  And he wanted to put a snowflake on top of the tree, too.  Good thing he settled for his own special snowflake (aka an ornament).

The kids did a great job.  Normally I'm so OCD about the tree and placement of the ornaments that I go back and move things around once the kids have gone to bed (I know people....it's a sickness!).  But this year I'm so content and happy with the fabulous job they did that I didn't have to move a thing. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!