DECKING THE HALLS...

It's taken me a whole week to post about this, but life's kind of busy these days, isn't it?! We had a busy weekend last weekend getting things together for the holidays. After picking out our tree last Saturday, Steve and I were supposed to head to his company's party and then on to an open house at some friends of ours who live near us, but I wasn't feeling great and so we decided to make it a low-key evening at home, getting out the Christmas decorations and beginning to set things up.

A quick snapshot from the treestand

After a dinner of Chinese food, we trimmed the tree and put out some of our other table toppers, vase fillers, and garland, as well as Steve's ever-growing (and utterly annoying) collection of singing, jingling animatronic animals and snowmen - most of which found a really nice home in the rec room in the basement :) . We also took our menorah out of storage and put it in a place where it will be easy to find when the time comes to light the first candle! Although we are raising Caroline Catholic like her Mommy, we want to make sure that she understands where Daddy and his family came from, too.

Here's Caroline, hanging her first decoration and ornament!

Playing with some decorations - the fabulous animatronic animals are in the background...

Decorating was so much fun this year. Over the past several years, we've often rushed through the process, treating it like something we had to check off our holiday to-do list. This year was so different - mainly because of Caroline's enthusiasm. It was awesome that she could finally participate in some of the set-up, even as she hung thirty ornaments on the same branch and spent a good deal of the time undoing what we had just done. This has been something I've been looking forward to since she was born, and makes me even more excited at the prospect of having another little one to help get into the spirit, understand some of the religion behind it all, learn our extended family's old traditions, and begin new ones with our own young family.

Last Sunday, after dinner with Steve's parents and sister, we decided to drive around our neighborhood for a bit to look at the lights on the houses - just like my parents did with us when we were little. Over and over Caroline exclaimed, "We make Mommy's house Kiss-mas, too?!" and "Oh, gosh! Another lights!" It was too adorable. I have a feeling that we'll be driving around quite a bit over the next few weeks! And, as she has requested, we will be working on getting our own lights and garland up soon...