Decorating the Tree

This year was the first year that I let the kids help decorate the tree. Oh boy. We probably should have waited another year. They were very excited, which was cute, but they were so excited that listening, following directions, not touching the breakables, waiting, etc. all went right out the window, and it was about all mine and Aaron's patience could handle. But over all, the tinsel eventually got untangled (several times), the ornaments were hung, and only one glass ball was broken. (Lincoln tried cracking it like an egg because he wanted to see what was in it. The things that never occur to me!) I didn't even bother to get out the collection of Prescious Moment ornaments from my childhood...those will have to stay in the box a few more years until my kids are old enough not to break them.

Lincoln was the most excited. He just kept talking non-stop about Christmas and ornaments, and trees, and how today was Christmas (no matter how hard we tried to convince him otherwise), and the snowflakes, and the star, and the angel, and what was this, and what was that, and can he put his ornaments on the tree, and could he touch the lights, and when were we going to open presents, and Christmas was his birthday, and we need to sing the Merry Christmas Song....and on and on and on, all at full volume. (My mother will tell you that this is her sweet revenge.) But I do think that Christmas is going to be a lot of fun this year with Lincoln.

Ivan was really into it right at first, while we were still getting everything out of the box. But once that was through, he retreated to the kitchen stool and proceeded to read the Oxford French English Dictionary. It's a new habit of his lately. I don't know what he finds so interesting about the dictionaries, but just about every day he pulls one off the shelf and sits down and "reads" it to himself for about 15 minutes. Then he puts it back on the shelf and life resumes as normal. Maybe he's going to be a linguist.

Adelia was fairly well behaved in her chair for about 5 minutes. Then I had to hold her, which is how I came to be the event's photographer, because I only had one hand to help.

Eventually we had to just put the kids to bed with the tree unfinished because it was taking too long and Aaron had a lot of homework to do. I was just going to finish it by myself while Aaron worked, but Adelia had other ideas. I ended up holding her most of the night. So that's why there isn't a finished picture of our tree. Maybe some day the rest of the stuff will get put on it, and maybe it won't. Either way, at least the tree is up this year.