Merry Christmas

Decorating for Christmas was an... event (to say the least!) in our house this past weekend. We decided to go ahead and put up Christmas things for a few reasons. First, so that we could remember that it IS almost Christmas. Being that summer is just beginning for us, it's sometimes hard to keep that in mind with the tank tops, flip flops and shorts coming out of the closet. Secondly, we were looking at the next few weekends and realized that we didn't really have a "lazy" weekend with nothing planned for a long while. We didn't want to wait until halfway through December to decorate, so Saturday was it. It made me think back to what we were doing when Em was 9 weeks, since that's how old Coop is these days. We realized we were in Wisconsin with friends saying "goodbye" because we were off to Kansas City right after that. It also made us think back to last Christmas and our frantic time trying to get in all the "final" to-do's in before leaving for South Africa. Just before Thanksgiving, we were finishing papers, driving to Tennessee, and desperately trying to get everything packed to go.

Well, this year, there was slightly more "decorating" and slightly less packing. Em was the first one to put up (and subsequently tear down) her ornament that she got from Mom and Dad last year from Ten Thousand Villages (amazing store- seriously, check it out!).

We put the Christmas tree up that we received from one of my Bible study gals in Illinois two years ago on top of the trunk we salvaged from missions furniture storage and thought we were pretty ingenious- both for the free tree, the free trunk, AND for managing to get the tree out of Em's arm reach... or so we thought. It wasn't more than 25 seconds without one of us in the room that Em got her rocking chair from GGrampy, moved it in front of the trunk, and pulled off half a dozen ornaments and a string of beads. Cooper seemed more than amused by all the activities and really enjoyed hanging out on the clean, but unfolded, clothes on the couch. Hope you all enjoy the pictures and your chilly festivities wherever you are.