Our Christmas Tree

This year we had to move our small couch out of the living room to make room for the tree. When Ethan woke up from his nap and saw a tree there instead of the couch he looked like he thought that was strange. He kept looking behind the tree as if the couch was back there somewhere.

Before:


After:


Ethan's reaction:



Ethan & Daddy enjoying playing some xbox or playstation 3:

Tree Lighting & Decorations

On Sunday my parents, sister & her kids and us all went to the Christmas tree lighting near our house. There were train rides, hay rides, a ferris wheel, Santa, singing, a magician & free hot chocolate. We were there for a little over an hour. It was 48 degrees outside when we walked over at 430pm and by 5pm it was in the low 40's. We are lucky that we bundled Ethan in a snow suit that a friend had given me. I thought I'd never use it. Leave it to a Californian to use a snow suit when it's only 40 degrees outside ;)

It even "snowed" foamy bubbles.





Ethan & Santa

We also did some decorating this weekend too. We put up our Christmas tree and all of the ornaments we could find. The tree looks great! This year was the first year we bought stockings. It was our one buy for Christmas this year. We're gradually getting the things we need, but trying not to break the bank in the process.

I'll have to add the photos of our stockings and more of the tree once I get more off the camera. Merry Christmas!

If you give Erin a box of decorations...

...she'll probably want a tree to decorate.

The day after Thanksgiving I felt like I really wanted to get all the Christmas stuff out of the garage. We only have 1 box of Christmas stuff and it's mostly ornaments that my mom has saved for me since I was a baby, ornaments we have received as gifts and hand-me-down decorations. Once we got it all out, I really wanted a tree. Ken and I have never had a Christmas tree which I know for some people is insane. We've always been so tight with our budget that we never wanted to spend money on a tree, especially since we don't have kids to enjoy it. We've always wanted to buy a fake tree too and they are expensive. So, for the last few Christmas' we either haven't put anything up or had a 2 ft fake tree (found in the hand-me-down box) which doesn't hold any more than a few ornaments. One year Ken strung lights around our apartment, but that's about it.

Anyways, once we got the decorations out I started thinking that maybe we should just buy a real tree this year just so we had something to put up. It all started with me saying, "Why don't we just go take a look?" and ended in us buying our first fake Christmas tree. We found an 8 ft tree at California Backyards for $300 so with the cost of a real tree it will pay for itself in about 6 years.

Here are the pictures of us setting it up and finally getting all the ornaments out of their boxes. It turned out really nice and we had a nice night listening to Christmas music and hanging out together.

The first set of branches

Pulling down the branches

Me getting all the branches spread out.