O, Christmas Tree

Right after Thanksgiving, Mitchell noticed that people were putting up their Christmas trees and he kept asking us when we were putting ours up. I thought we would be able to do it the week after Thanksgiving, but it seemed like none of us had the energy after school/work. Finally, Dave bought up the tree from the basement on Friday, Dec 4th. I can't do any heavy lifting (thank goodness Dave was at my appointment with me when the ultrasound technician reminded me that with Christmas coming, I shouldn't do any lifting.), so he was on his own with bringing up the big bag we keep the artificial tree in up from the basement. He also put it together by himself. It stood undecorated in the dining room until Saturday, Dec 12th, when Dave went up into the attic to retrieve the Christmas decorations.

Mitchell was so excited about decorating the tree. He really pitched in and helped me out and even told me, "Mommy, if you need help, just ask me. I'll help you." He did a great job decorating the lower 1/3 of the tree. That is where the highest concentration of ornaments is. But that's OK. It was nice to have some help this year!

I put out some other Christmas decorations around the den -- one being a snow globe that I bought for Mitchell a few years ago. I'd always put it in his room, but didn't this year. Well, he noticed and wasn't too happy. So he took it upon himself to rearrange some decorations in the den and he moved the snow globe to his room and said that is where it was supposed to go. Just when I think something doesn't really matter to him, I find out that it does!

Speaking of his room...he's created a shrine to the Falcons in his room. He has a display set up with the program from the game a few weeks ago, their tickets from the game, a Christmas card from the team, a poster of the team and the football cards that someone gave him when he went to the game.

Back to the Christmas decorations.

The tree

The mantel

(I need to find a few more stuffed snowmen!)

The banister

(The red velvet bows are courtesy of my Mom. I can't even tell you how old they are. But I can tell you that I'm using the same newspaper that she used to stuff the loops so they don't get crushed when the bows are packed away. And the dates on the papers go back to the mid-80s!)

We didn't get out all of the Christmas decorations this year, but the guest room is full of empty boxes from what we did bring down from the attic. We also had to put the chairs from the dining room table in the guest room. (We pushed the table up against one wall so we could put the tree in the corner.) We had some friends over for dinner on Friday, December 11th, and I was appalled when for whatever reason, Dave took the husband into the guest room! Although his only comment was he noticed that the bed wasn't made. (I had slept in there when I was sick a few weeks ago.) He got a kick out of how upset I was that he had seen the room with an unmade bed, chairs stacked everywhere and the boxes precariously stacked where they would fit. I'm really afraid that if someone goes in there and sneezes, it will start an avalanche of boxes. Thank goodness no one needs the guest room or we'd be in trouble!

Mitchell and I will be in NC the week after Christmas and I'm secretly hoping that everything will be packed up when we return on January 3rd...but I'm not getting my hopes up!