Deck The Halls

First, an admission: we're not very good decorators. At least I'm not. Carrie's pretty good, but even she would tell you our living room looks nothing like an Ethan Allen catalog. With that said we started the big task of Christmas decorating the other day.

Our big fake tree is ridiculously heavy, and a pain to put up. Just picture me digging this huge box out of the back (I mean way back) of a basement closet where it's sat dormant for the last 10 months, hoisting it up the stairs, and slamming it on the living room floor. "Alright it's upstairs, I'm ready for a nap," I say out of breath. But then Carrie politely asks me to put it up. And since she's carrying my twins and all, I comply.

So I get it out, and slap the three big sections together. The tree has lights already on it, but you have to connect the plug-ins from one section to another. Let's just say it's the hardest thing I have to do every single year. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but the plug-ins are green, the tree's green, branches start looking like plug-ins, plug-ins like branches, I start feeling dizzy, you get the idea.

Once I got the tree up, Ellie was all pumped up to get the ornaments on. She took them all out of the packages and was so excited to get them up. She didn't care where they went of course, just that she could see her reflection in the shiny ones. Then once we had the tree up, the ornaments on, the snowman figurines displayed on the end tables, Ellie says, "Is Christmas over now Mommy?"

Ellie's had a good time playing with the Nativity scene too. We didn't know Dora The Explorer was present at the birth of Christ, but evidently at our house she was. The Dora figurine plays with Baby Jesus, who is also apparently a girl according to Ellie. Who knew...

Notice Dora at the feet of Joseph. She's got a snowsuit on. I'm guessing it was cold in Bethlehem, she just wanted to be prepared.