It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

Mike and I have always put up our Christmas stuff the SECOND we got home from Thanksgiving in Bremerton-but this year was a little crazier...we came home and rushed to plan the current week at school, print the necessary materials, do homework, grade papers, unpack from our trip to SLC, clean the house, get ready for my preschool family show and field trip, Mike's huge final at CWU, etc and ALL OF IT HAPPENING THIS WEEK!....no time for pulling down the "harvest" decor, let alone put up new stuff. So we did it today-hey-it's still the first week of December, so that works...right? Still I feel so behind-everyone else I know is DONE with their decorating and we just started!
Before the whole "decorating" party, Em & I headed down to the basement for the gigantic Christmas Boxes...luckily Em brought along her trusty flashlight, because it was D-A-R-K and scary down there!

(yep-that's the flashlight...it annoyingly barks but let's out JUST enough light to be handy!)

Some of my favorite items are the snowflake card holder from Pottery Barn and the matching family stockings that Mike's mom made. The tree of hands was something I made in Kindergarten & my mom saved for me.

I got the fuzzy little snowmen faces this year when I went to Utah....too cute! I LOVE them-I also got the HO HO HO blocks and the giant cream sparkle star to put above my Willow Tree Nativity. (I am obsessed with The Quilted Bear & Tai Pan-they have so many cool things!)

The kids had so much fun helping decorate. Em enjoyed watching each new ornament get unwrapped-especially the ones that belonged to her (The Grinch, "E", Baby's First X-mas), and the "Twinkles" (the lights). Bryce of course said "oooooh" to everything in sight and just wanted to touch. He put his "B" ornament on & off the tree what seemed like 27 times.

The Mickey Hat is Emma's first Christmas ornament (we spent that xmas at Disneyland) and the Onesie is Bryce's. Then the other 2 ornaments are our family-so they are particularly special to us.

The tiny white snowball looking twinkle garland, was a decoration from our wedding reception. The first year we were married Mike said he always thought a themed tree would be nice, so we picked candy cane colors (red & white) and added the grinch green when Em was born. During that first christmas we came across the white/clear beaded garlands in a box & thought they were PERFECT for our tree. We still think we were right-plus now it makes our tree extra special!

Now the challenge will be, how to keep our sweet peaches away from the tree....no not the dogs-OUR KIDS! Good luck to us huh?