Merry Christmas! - Part 1: The Decorating

I have always loved Christmas. Everything about it. And now that we have kids, I love it even more. It's so much fun to talk about Santa and show Greyden the ropes. This year he was actually old enough to understand the "Santa" concept. Or, he at least understood that there was a guy coming to our house and bringing him presents. He really didn't care much beyond that. Oh, and the whole "be good because Santa is watching" thing? Yeah, that's pretty sweet too.
 
It's always been a pain in the ass for me to convince Kevin that he we had to decorate the outside of our house when we lived in nice, warm Texas, so convincing him that it had to be done in freezing cold Michigan took some finesse. Meaning I finally had to whip out the guilt card and remind him that this was Emerson's first Christmas and the first Christmas that Greyden was old enough to take part in. That finally did it, although it didn't cut back on the amount of grumbling.
 
The first step was the house. Unfortunately this is the only picture I got of this step. I somehow missed the part where Kevin was hanging over the edge of the roof to get to the high peak. Probably because I was covering my eyes.
 

 

 

Grey was pretty impressed with the whole decorating thing.

 

After the house was done, Kevin got the genius idea to decorate the pine tree out front. 

 

Because nothing could possibly go wrong here....

 

 
He eventually gave up on that idea (thank god) and resorted to decorating our weeping pine on the other side of the front yard instead.
 

 

 

While Kevin was busy working on the outside of the house, I was on tree decorating duty. We had gotten our tree a few days earlier. Of course the day we took the kids to the Christmas Tree farm was probably the coldest day we had had so far that year. Or at least it felt like that to Kevin and me. It was a far cry from going to a U-Cut place in Texas and "cutting" the tree from a bucket of water in the ground, all while wearing our sunglasses and flip flops. Yeah, they don't exactly grow them around there.

 

 

On the hayride to the Christmas Tree field

Why does she always look so concerned???

Looking for the perfect tree.

 

Found it!

First he tried this side.

 

 

Then, after much cussing, tried this side.



 

Grey finally realized that Daddy wouldn't be able to do it alone, so he decided he needed to help.

 

 

Finally got it. Grey is obviously THRILLED!
 

Yeah, so it was a lot bigger once we got it up and in the house. I'd say at least 9 feet.

Greyden got to help with the decorating.

He lost interest shortly after this ornament (his first and last).