It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

We went to see Santa at Cox Farms down the street on Saturday. It was a very cold day, so we bundled up! The babies didn't mind sitting on his lap, but we couldn't get them to both look at the camera for the photo. We had some hot cider and kettle corn and went to buy our tree. I know we looked foolish having someone take our picture, especially when Darrell and I were looking so rough. But it's now documented that we went together to buy our tree for their 1st Christmas.

Now my house looked like Santa and his elves came in and just threw up everywhere. There are boxes and boxes of decorations, lights, ornaments, and the like in every room. I look at all of it and suddenly become overwhelmed. It literally took us 4 days to put a few lights on the house and the wreaths on the windows. Neighbors probably thought we were crazy. One day, there was 1/2 strand of icicle lights, then 2 wreaths on random windows (missing the 6 others), then garland on 3/4 of the door... you catch my drift. Am I crazy, or does every year it seem like you have to go to Target, Michaels, Lowe's, etc. about a zillion times to buy the same thing you had last year? We put garland out last year, but suddenly this year, we're short. What the heck?

We finally finished outside. Although, I'd like to put more lights out, but D doesn't find it amusing to climb up on our roof to have the icicle lights hanging from our gables 3 stories up. "But Clark Griswold did it every year and he had it much worse," I say. Not amused.

Then we move inside to the decorations. I put up as much as I want this year. But then I spend time rearranging over and over. Now I look at them and want to start all over. I think I want all new decorations. Can't decide... then the tree. We had it soak overnight and now it's in the stand. Yay! That only took 2 hours. I'm excited to put the lights up. But wait, someone's crying, then it's dinner time, then bath time, then bedtime. I come back downstairs and look at our sorry tree with one strand of lights covering about 1/8 of it at the bottom. And they're still lit. It took all of my might to put the rest of the lights on. Oh, and about 3 more hours as I multi-task Cayenne Paper orders, etc.

Now it's Monday night and we have a beautiful tree, but still with just lights. Pretty, but lights and only lights. Think the babies will notice if we stop there? Only kidding, of course. I'm slowly realizing that this is how life will be for a while. All that free time I had before to spend an entire day decorating. Now, it's just lights.

Did I tell you I have a Dept. 56 village with about 10 buildings and a zillion accessories? Yeah-- it's still in the box.