'Tis the Season

So, ever since we have been married we have had a potted Christmas tree. This is the first Christmas tree we ever had as a couple. It's potted, but at least it was real. We never had the money to go and buy a big one and my husband always insisted on real ones over fake ones, so we would just get potted ones and buy small decorations for them. There was nothing wrong with a potted tree, and I didn't mind having them, but they somehow died before Christmas came, and they were a mess to clean up...needles all over the place and what not. Christmas trees of '05, '06, and '07 basically all looked the same as the above pictures. Well, now that we have a baby, I told my husband that there was no way our little guy was going to be opening his Christmas presents sitting next to a potted tree. So this year I asked my dad to help us buy a tree. We were getting ready to go pick one out when my husband decided he didn't want to have to deal with the mess of a real one and that it would be best to get a fake one, even if they didn't smell as nice as real ones. So we made a mental u-turn and went to Wal Mart and got a nice one for only $40 and some decorations. Jared put the tree together and I decorated it. Here is our beautiful, long waited for Christmas tree.

I personally think it looks excellent!

One thing that I love most about Christmas is being able to put up Christmas lights. When I was growing up, my parents always strung Christmas lights across the whole living room ceiling and across the archway to the living room. I loved it so much at night when all the lights in the house were off and all you could see were the Christmas lights, bright and glowing and all different colors, especially the ones on the tree. This year the lights on our Christmas tree slowly fade in and out one at a time. I don't like it when lights blink really fast, but this fade setting has one color fade at a time, so our tree never looks like there aren't any lights on it, and that is especially fun to watch at night time. So, because I loved lights so much as a child, I decided to get a few boxes of $2 lights and put them up around my house. And this year I bought a wreath for our door because we had never had one before. It is so much fun to have a Christmasy house!

We are trying to teach Uriah how to sit up. He is doing very well at getting on his hands and knees or on his hands and tip-toes, so we thought we'd help him practice sitting up. He does great if he sits oriented by the middle of his body, but if he tries to lean one way or the other, he just keeps going and falls over. I tried to take a picture of him by his first Christmas tree, but he would only stay sitting up for about 5 seconds because he was being a stinker, so the pictures turned out blurry because he would start to sway just as I clicked the button.

Here are a few more pictures of other decorations I have up around the house. The paper ones are heirlooms from my family decorations when I was young, and the nativity was given to me by my ma-in-law.

Santa ALWAYS comes to my house, and with all 9 reindeer. Rudolph looks special because...well, he's special!

This is my snowman nativity. Cute, huh?

Well, I've got to get off to bed. I've got an awful headache and it has just been one of those typical Mondays when you are just so thankful to get back into bed.