Making Spirits Bright

We didn't waste a minute after Thanksgiving to start making spirits bright for Christmas.  It was so fun to put up the decorations for the first time and see how everything fits in.  I was especially excited about our new Christmas tree!

 Rocky (and Brinley) took the reigns on gettting the behemoth up and I did most of the decorating. 

 

Rocky tried to pass off the task of fluffing the branches to me but his OCD side came out and he just couldn't take my haphazard fluffing.  He took it very seriously...and I let him!

Brinley was super excited about putting all the ornaments on the tree.  She was very careful  and concerned about each one. 

Here is the finished tree in all her glory.  I didn't take any of it all lit up.  We went with a prelit tree and it was worth the investment. There was a slight bend to the tree that bothered me all month but Rocky refused to see it so it just stayed that way.  What do you think?

My favorite part of the decor was my crazy tree topper.  I know its kinda funky but I like it!

 

Here is the rest of our decor on the bookshelves surrounding our fireplace.    

We did our tradition of setting out the nativity and reading the bible story of Jesus' birth.  

And we set up our little tree to do our advent ornaments each day.  Rocky's mom also brought us his old felt advent calendar.  Brin enjoyed both each day of December.

 

The last task of decorating, and the most unbelievable one yet, was putting lights on the OUTSIDE of our house!  Rocky has always said he would never do this, and I always wanted him to.  This year it really happened!!  I don't know if he was beat down by my years of asking or if he felt the peer pressure of the neighbors houses being lit up, but either way, it looked great!  Brinley wished for multi-colored lights and a blow up Santa in the front yard but I told her we needed to just take what we can get this year and maybe next year...haha

Other than decorating the house, we celebrated the season by wearing our matching reindeer shirts, maing our traditional "White Trash" snack mix and sharing it with our neighbors,

Going to a Christmas service at my Dad's church in Eastland,

 

And going to visit Santa!

Brinley couldn't wait to see him and tell him that she wanted Stompees, a Cuddleuppet, and a Dream Lite. 

The visit with Santa went great and we got a good little picture to remember Cason's first sit on Santa's lap.  He was so young this year that he didn't get in on most of the Christmas cheer but he was there and I am sure he was soaking it up. 

H