Christmas tree

 This year we decided to get a real tree! I am very happy about this, since last year all we had was little fake tree. Real trees are the best! There are several reasons I love real trees here are just a few of them: they smell wonderful, they are like an early Christmas gift since you never know what they are going to look like after you take the string off, and they are beautiful! No matter how much I would dress up our fake tree, I never got as excited about decorating it as I do when the tree is real. There is just something about them that make me so excited. Even going to pick them out, is such a treat. Sure we just head to our local Menards and pick one out, but it is still so much fun! Maybe someday when my boys are a little older we will actually head to a Christmas tree farm and cut one down ourselves. But until they can help with some of the cutting and lifting, we will just head to the store for our tree!

Hayden really enjoyed helping this year. I would  have to move things around a little since he can only reach so high, but for the most part he did really well. I love watching him carefully pick his ornament and then shove it on the tree using a bit or force. He is a typical boy in that he  picked all of my old basketball ornaments to put on the tree. I tried to put some of them away, since they are a little silly, but he insisted that they be on the tree. So our tree, like every year since we had kids, is a mixture of beautiful doves and glass bulb ornaments and cheesy old Santas playing basketball.

Elliot just watched us decorate from his ExerSaucer. He has a good time chewing on his toys and would squeal at us when we would get to involved with the tree. He did not want to be left out!

Every year I give Hayden a Christmas ornament of his choice. I put his name and the year on the bottom so he can keep track of when he got his ornament. I am now doing the same thing with Elliot. Hopefully this will become a tradition that they may do with their children someday. It is interesting to see what they pick each year. This is not just something that I want to do with my children, but is also something that I am going to start with my God-children as well. I hope this will be something they can take with them when they are adults and have their own trees to decorated!

Hayden, patiently waiting to put the star on top. 

The finished product!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!