Friday, December 13, 2013

It's that Time Again

It's a good morning for blogging, when a boy wakes you at 6 a.m., so I should make an effort to get caught up.  This past weekend, the boys helped us decorate for the tree. Saturday was  a busy day, and we only got the tree up, so on Sunday, we put it together.  Jacob and I rarely make it to church on Sunday mornings, because he likes to nap Right at the time church is supposed to start, he's usually still asleep.  And I've learned that if I wake him so I can get him to church, I end up spending the whole service in the nursery, so if I'm going to miss it anyway, I might as well just stay home. 


OK, well, so maybe not Jacob doesn't really help so much.  He is just along for the ride.  
But he's awfully sweet.  


This year, Sam put the first ornament on the tree.   It was one he made in Sunday school, a round circle smothered in glitter.  Glitter is the bane of parents, and the joy of children.  
And it captures Christmas tree light perfectly. 



Sam was quite a great helper at putting up Christmas ornaments on the tree. 
Ironically, it was Chris we had to work on to get him to help out.  


Jacob was content playing on the floor as we unpacked all the boxes.  
This was his first experience with Little People.  The Little People Nativity. 


First he went for the sheep, and Sam kept wanting to sit down and play with him. 


This was my favorite pic, Jacob eats Baby Jesus.  A friend of mine made the crack that it was his unofficial First Communion. 


We got Chris to come and help do some decorating of the tree too.  
He did a wonderful job understanding which ornaments were kid friendly, and ok for them to put on the tree, and which were not, aka glass ornaments, or anything breakable.  



Sam found a pretty green one, he said it was his favorite.  He couldn't keep his hands off the sparkly ones.
Sam wasn't so good at this distinction, and we lost one, a glass one from Eric's Grandma and Grandpa Chambers.  They gave us a box of old glass ones when we first got married, and they sold their house and bought a trailor.  We had nothing for our tree, and they gave us some.   It was sad that we lost one, but we already had gained a couple new ornaments for Jacob this year.  


Both boys putting up their homemade ornaments.  


Jacob got tired of the process.  And he objected highly to being put in the swing.  Even though the swing plays the Nutcracker, he was not a fan.  He demanded to be held.  


It was hard for me to hold him and decorate at the same time.  But we found a workaround, I unbox ornaments and pass them to Daddy.  But then I started unboxing the silver snowflakes for the upstairs tree. Jacob LOVED them.  He wanted to help.  He loved to hear them clink together as I loaded my hand up with all of them to take them upstairs.  Last year, I did the same thing, and had to lay down for 1/2 hour after going upstairs.  This year, Jake and I took the snowflakes upstairs, I set him down, put them on the tree, and went back downstairs to keep on keeping on.  What a difference a year makes! 


Daddy puts the more fragile ornaments higher up (aka out of reach of children) on the tree. 


Chris found a nifty Usborne Nativity book, and he broke out the card characters, and reinacted the Nativity Story.  Very cool, but a lot of pieces to end up everywhere.  I'm finding I'm not a fan of things with lots of tiny pieces....legos, another bane of my existance. 


Although it was sweet to see the boys acting out the story of Jesus' birth with cardboard punchouts.



And here is the Final Product. 
Our Christmas Tree. 
I could just sit and watch it for a long while.  
I don't blame Jake for falling asleep by its light, it's very calming.

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