I always loved helping my parents put up the tree and decorate the house for Christmas. When I was in high school I got my very own little three foot tree for my room and loved decorating it. Once David and I were married I loved collecting items to decorate our home for Christmas. In my pre-children days I decorated with a tree and a nativity in every room. However, when children came along - it's true - they change everything. We still celebrated Christmas of course but all that expendable time I had to decorate was drastically cut. And you know what - all my decorating for Christmas could never have showed me as much about it's true meaning, about God's love in sending His Son, that having a son of my own did. Pretty awesome how that works, isn't it? But I still love to decorate.
We did manage to get a tree up in 2004 when Nathan was a three-month-old. Ain't he cute?
The next year I had a one-month-old and a fifteen-month-old and just didn't think I could handle a tree along with all the other chaos that was my life at that time. Then I decided not to brave it last year either with a two-year-old and one-year-old. This year however, the tree has returned. The boys were very interested in the whole assembling the tree process. They enjoyed 'helping' us put it up. When I told Nathan that there was a Christmas tree in the big green tub I'm pretty sure he thought that it would be a fully assembled tree that we would just take out. He caught on to the whole fluffing out the branches and putting them on the pole concept pretty quick though.
Looks like Benjamin has the next branch ready - sort of.
It's starting to come together.
At this point we add the train. This is definitely one of the coolest things about our tree. 
Here's the tree with just lights and the train (we added ornaments the next day).
I love Christmas books and always try to pick up a couple at the after Christmas sales. One year I found this book called "The Twelve Bugs of Christmas" (sounds like a book boys would like doesn't it?) and read/sang it to them to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." They were entertained (David was laughing pretty hard too while taking our picture).
And to all a good night.Did I mention that I LOVE CHRISTMAS!?
2 comments:
Oh my goodness! I have never seen a train IN the tree before!!! I love it! Where did you find it??? Our Christmas train died last year, so we'll have to get a new one for next year when we have a place to put it.
I think we bought it at Lowe's back in 1999 or maybe 2000. The brand name is Playgo (Hong Kong). Hope this info helps. It is a really cool addition to any tree. Now I sound like a commercial.
Post a Comment