A Season of Joy

We have had such a wonderful Christmas season. We had to carve out little pieces of time to celebrate and enjoy our favorite traditions before Christmas because Seth's last final wasn't until the 17th and then he worked 6 12-hour shifts in a row so he could have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. I was equally busy trying to get everything ready for Christmas by myself with 2 kids and a giant belly in tow, not to mention running a freelance national PR campaign for the holidays. Here are some of our pre-Christmas highlights...

We picked out our Christmas tree the first week of December...it looked so much smaller this year on our big car! :)

The annual Tate family Christmas party was on the 13th. We always have it at Grandma Tate's ward since the family has grown too big for any house. Morgan was a darling wiseman in the nativity (which includes duplicates or more of every part and still a rather large audience looking on).

Chloe loved her gift from the gift exchange. She carries her little red purse with her everywhere. This proved to be a wonderful thing when I took her with me to the Dr's office and she sat perfectly in the waiting room and office putting on lipgloss, eating the treats she had stocked and playing with her baby.

I love my house at Christmastime. I love my decorations and want to leave them up for as long as possible.

This year, it took me so long to get everything decorated that I may just leave it all up until the middle of January (though the tree had to come down because it was dead and dry)! Our tree started out beautifully decorated - which I didn't take any pictures of - well-lit everywhere with ornaments staggered and lovely. That lasted about 10 minutes. Morgan and Chloe loved decorating so much that they wanted to keep doing it constantly the whole season long. My snowmen ornaments were grouped into families - all the ear-muff-wearing-ones together with a Mom, Dad, kids and even grandparents.

The mittens were all hung in a row.

And Santa and his reindeer became a favorite toy to fly around the living room so he didn't spend much time actually on the tree.

The first couple of days, I put things back in their spaced and aesthetically pleasing locations, but eventually I just gave up and enjoyed the relization that this is life with kids! My kids like to sort and organize and make logical connections (I wonder where they get that from) so why wouldn't they do the same with Christmas ornaments?

A few days after we got the tree up, a strand of lights right in the middle of the tree burned out - so annoying - and I didn't get up the energy to replace it until Christmas Eve. So, this was our tree for most of the season...

I don't have a picture of my Mom's nativity, but every time we have gone over there during the season, Morgan has been immediately drawn to it. After we left her house the first time, my mom found all of the animals inside of the nativity close to the baby Jesus in the manger. The next time we were over, she watched more carefully as Morgan , again, placed each animal inside the stable, close to baby Jesus. She asked him why all the animals were in the stable and he replied that the animals huddle close to baby Jesus to keep him warm. Every time visiting since, we watch on with happy hearts as Morgan rearranges the animals to keep baby Jesus warm in his manger - the real reason for joy this holiday season!