December Fun: Setting up the Christmas Tree!

This Christmas season has been pretty different than past ones for our little family. Typically, I go all out decorating the house, we put up a very large Christmas tree that requires the living room to be completely rearranged, and the kids and I do lots of Christmas crafts and activities. By necessity, things just couldn't be that way this year. We've still done a few fun things, but it's been pretty minimal compared to what we usually do. And decorating? Well, I just haven't had energy for that really at all, so we have just a very few festive things up around the house. 

Chris and I decided a while back that we wouldn't be putting up our big tree this year. For one thing, it's really time consuming to set up and decorate. Also, we didn't want to mess with rearranging our living room, and we didn't know if I'd be on bed rest at this point or what. We certainly didn't want to not have a tree at all as we knew Brianna and Brenson would love having one up, so we decided to buy a smaller tree, a few simple decorations for it, and put it in the corner of the living room that only required one small piece of furniture to be moved (and it was going to be moved anyway because after we take the tree down, we'll put the baby swing in this corner). It's worked out really well, and I love our small, simple tree this year!

We decided to set up the tree on Tuesday, December 9th. Chris had several vacation days he needed to use before the end of the year, so he had taken this day off from work. I had a dentist appointment early that morning, then we went and met Santa and ran some other errands in the nearby big city. The kids couldn't wait to get the tree up, and this evening was the perfect time to do it!

Helping Daddy fluff the branches:

I basically sat in the chair and supervised most of the work. Even at this point, I was just so worn out by the evening time that I couldn't do much (I was 30 weeks pregnant at this time).

Thankful for a hubby who's willing to do things like decorate the Christmas tree :-).

Aside from some ribbon and basic round ornaments, we did pull out all the kids' Hallmark ornaments for them to hang on the tree. They receive two Hallmark ornaments every year that are both part of a series . . . one from us and one from their Meme. They were very happy to see their little series ornaments and hang them on the tree!

I had purchased both kids' ornaments a few weeks before this, but unfortunately had a moment of pregnancy brain when I purchased Bren's ornament. I don't know what I was thinking, but I bought an ornament from the WRONG series. We buy him the "A Pony for Christmas" series, and for some reason I bought the "Santa's Sweet Ride" ornament??? Pregnancy brain . . . the struggle is REAL!

So, I ended up running up to our local Hallmark and purchasing Bren the correct ornament. Ugh. I was so irritated with myself (although he totally didn't seem to care).

I did get in on a little bit of the decorating :-).

Please ignore how rough I'm looking, ha!

I was trying to teach Brianna a little bit about even ornament distribution. The kids kept putting two and three ornaments on one branch of the tree!

It's beginning to come together!

My sweet girl loved decorating the tree.

We were getting pretty bottom heavy, so Chris started lifting the kids to get some ornaments more toward the top.

This is Brianna holding her Hallmark ornament from us this year. We buy her the "A Visit from Santa" series.

And here is Bren with the correct ornament . . . from the "A Pony for Christmas" series!

I guess I forgot to take a photo of the finished product, but I'm happy with how the tree turned out! And of course, the kids love it. They are both so good to not play with the tree or the ornaments . . . it truly hasn't even been an issue at all this year. Next year will probably be a different story, ha! 

Stay tuned for another post about a few other fun activities we've been able to do this season!