12 Days of Christmas: Day 2 - O Christmas Tree

The Twelve Days of Christmas are some of my favorite days. They are a time of relaxing and vegging. It's a time for playing with new toys, reading new books and playing video games. 

It's also a time of looking back over the year. Aswell as looking forward to the new one. 

Today I was sick so I slept late. I also folded laundry (I am determined to get it all folded before the new year), I planned for a 5k I plan to run in February, while stuffing my face with peppermints. And the kids destroyed the house. 

As I look back on this year I thought I'd share how we spent our Advent/Christmas season. It is still Christmas after all! 

We got or Christmas tree the week before Thanksgiving. We knew we'd be traveling for Thanksgiving and we wanted the tree to be up when we got home. Plus we like to start early. 

Everyone had fun running around the tree lot. It's actually one of our favorite places to visit. It's a local farm stand so it's where we get all our seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables, pumpkins and trees. 

Margaret just liked running around while I spent my time being far too picky about the perfect tree and chasing kids around. 

William helped with the chain saw. 

The kids and my mom watched from a far. 

That evening we had what Rosie called a "cookie feast" and decorated the tree. 

Even Margaret got a cookie!

Of course there was also egg nog. Which is one of our favorite holiday treats. 

This was the night we have the kids their new ornaments for the year. Obi was a happy boy when he saw his robot ornament. 

But he was really excited about his Olaf ornament from Nana   

Rosie loved her unicorn 

And Margaret seemed pretty happy about her shoe ornament. 

Even Nana got one this year.  She got a Tardis. 

And then we put all our pretty new ornaments, as well as our old loved ones, on the tree. We didn't get it all done in one evening but that's fun too. I guess that's another reason I like to start early.  That way we can take our time. 

I love decorating the tree because it reminds me of togetherness. It reminds me of all the fun memories we had as kids decorating the Christmas tree. And I hope that Obi and Rosie and Margaret grow up treasuring that togetherness too. 

I love that every year Rosie asks me to "tell the stories mommy!" Even if they are stories she's already heard, she wants to hear the special story that goes with each ornament. 

So that's how we start our Christmas season. It's always special and it's fun to build and add our own little traditions and memories. 

This year the kids and I also decorated at tree down at our new house. That was a lot of tree decorating and am so proud of them for how much they love it.