Making Memories

 We have a had a fun week of making Christmas memories for 2013.  The kids are at such a great age to enjoy the holiday season.  They are old enough to enjoy some of the festivities in the area and "help" with the decorating. 

We put up our tree last Saturday, after stopping at a local store to pick out the perfect tree.  Ever since we have been married Jay and I go back and forth about colored or white lights.  Even though we both grew up with colored lights, I think white lights look much nicer.  About 5 years ago we switched to LED lights and we bought colored and white, but the store didn't have many colored left, so we had more boxes of white lights.  Since then we have pretty much only used white lights on the tree, and I always use the excuse that we only have two boxes of colored lights, which is not enough for the tree.  On Sunday afternoon Jay and I started stringing the first strand of lights.  When we plugged them in, Trey asked where the rainbow lights were.  Apparently the Christmas trees on tv and in stores have colored lights and that is what he was expecting.  I asked him if he wanted Daddy to go buy colored lights for the tree.  Trey said yes and Jay silently cheered that finally someone else wanted colored lights and was in his "Christmas light camp."  That evening Trey was so excited about the "rainbow" lights and putting them up on the tree.  I am thinking I am going to be outnumbered in the white light category for a long time.

Charlotte was a pro at hanging the ornaments.  We did have to go behind her and move some off the very edge of the branches. 

Trey loved finding ornaments that he had made in past years.  He even remembered some he made last year!

We pulled out all the non-breakable ones for them to put on the tree.  They had them up in under 10 minutes. 

As you can see, their ornaments heavily covered the bottom 1/4 of the tree.  After they went to bed we put the rest of the ornaments on.  The lights are colored LED lights, but for some reason they look very blue in the photos. 

This is the first year I have learned about some of the fun Christmas activities for kids in our area.  Last Saturday evening we went to a museum downtown to make crafts and watch Santa arrive on a train.  The kids have never been interested in seeing Santa before so we had never taken them to sit on Santa's lap or go see him, but they were so excited to go see Santa last weekend.

The place was extremely crowded so we skipped the craft tables where the pandemonium was happening and found a quiet corner for the kids to decorate their cookies. 

Charlotte chose to decorate with green icing, which ended up everywhere but her coat!

 We went outside with another family we saw from church to watch for Santa to arrive.  After 10 minutes Trey said he was too cold and wanted to come back inside.  Since everyone else had made their way outside to wait for Santa, he had his pick of craft tables that were open and empty!

He made a Santa face.

Here he was making a tree with popsicle sticks.  The sweet volunteer helping him was quite concerned about the amount of glitter glue he used, but I didn't have a problem with it so he went to town with every color of glitter glue they had.

Charlotte waited outside with Jay for almost 45 minutes for Santa to arrive.  She didn't mind at all!  When she came back inside we got her to make one wreath craft. 

CBS had a Christmas movie special on t.v. tonight so the kids and I watched Frosty the Snowman together.  Trey checked out the Frosty the Snowman book from the school library yesterday, so it was perfect to watch the movie tonight.  Both kids were mesmerized by the show and Trey was extremely excited about eating one of his new favorite foods, popcorn.
 

We have some more Christmas fun in the plans for this weekend!