Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree . . .

Putting up the Christmas tree was a little different this year since, 1) It wasn’t our tree, and 2) It wasn’t our house. Still, we made it a family affair, with Jeff and Lori and the kids helping put up the tree on Sunday afternoon, and then Jon and I and Eli and my Mom and Dad decorating it on Sunday night. We did half of our ornaments and half Mom and Dad’s ornaments, so the tree is quite eclectic this year.

Lexi and Tori carried all the branches upstairs!Grandpa puts the top of the tree on!

During the ornament hanging process Elijah was really excited to open up all the boxes and try and take everything out as fast as he could - which, as you can imagine since a lot of the boxes had glass ornaments in them, didn’t go over too well with Mommy and Grandma.

Mommy holds her breath and supervises
the unwrapping of an ornamentElijah with his tree-decorating-beverage-of-choice. Hot chocolate!

We did end up with a nice selection of ornaments for the “Eli section” of the tree though, and Grandma discovered that she had quite a few ornaments which were a big hit with Eli – most notably a little mouse driving a choo choo train. Just about every morning now Eli takes his ornaments off the tree and lines them up under the tree and then carries them around all day. They ride his trains, take naps with him, and even come to eat with us occasionally. Then before bed at night we get to put all the ornaments back on the tree.

Hey, my froggy truck moved to Grand Rapids with me! Yay!

This takes extreme concentration
and superior hand-eye coordination.I did it all by myself, Mom!

Elijah really likes these cats in a basket ornaments that I have, the Michigan Football Santa (Santa with a football in a Michigan jersey and helmet) and the Michigan Football Snowman (ditto Santa’s get-up). We were playing with his ornaments the other day and I was asking him what the cats say – “Meow” – what the train says – “Choo choo” – and then what the Football Snowman says. Elijah looked at the snowman for a bit then got a big grin and said, “Go Blue! Just like Daddy!” We’re training him young, yes we are. Daddy was so proud.

Anyway, back to the tree decorating. After we were done Eli kept running back and forth around the tree and looking at all the ornaments, and we couldn’t really convince him that a family picture was necessary. Most of the pictures turned out with grumpy Eli or grumpy Mommy and Daddy faces. Finally we let him sit on his Retro Rocket and hold ornaments, which seemed to appease him. And despite the grumpy pictures we had a good time decorating the tree this year!

Pity the fool who thinks I'm going to smile for this picture!

Do you know why I'm smiling now?

You'd be smiling too if you had a sweet Retro Rocket like mine.At last, a picture where none of us looks too goofy.
Merry Christmas!