It's beginning to feel like Christmas!

We received a great package in the mail the other day, from Grandma Hartley. It included our favorite annual Baklava, presents, and these cute owl ornaments for the kids. They are so stinkin' cute I wish I could decorate our whole tree with them. And yes, this is a typical pose for our family. Me, trying to figure out a way to somehow look good in pictures because when I look AT the camera, it's no good (apparently, looking away doesn't do anything for me either). Molli....not sure what she is doing but it's darn cute anyway. Daxlee is following Molli, as usual, and Gage is actually smiling normal and not pulling a face! That's probably the first time in a year.

This year, we went to a Christmas Tree farm some 20 minutes away from Spangdahlem, and cut down a tree. It came down to 2 trees: #1 was Jake's favorite and had split so it had two tree toppers. We decided we could put a star on one and an angel on the other. Most of the trees we looked at were pretty but didn't have many branches so this "two topper" tree was a good solution because it added more branches having two main trunks and all. #2 was my pick. It had the awesome soft needles, was big and full, but the top was crooked.

#2 won. Molli wanted #1 so in compromise, we told her she could put the star on the tree.

There's the Daxlee I know.

One thing that drove us nuts is that we had to buy 220V lights. Why would that bother us you say? Well, they are much more expensive. They aren't your 99 cent Wal-mart lights but they are about the same quality, ringing in at around $3.49 Euro for a string with 35 lights on it (.72 euro cents = $1 american).

The other reason they drove us nuts is because the lights aren't your regular single string that you can attach to another set of lights. You can't attach them so we had to plug each light strand in seperately AND they are in a loop! So, the light strand is more like a lasso. We had to "lasso" our tree this year. We could only make ourselves do 3 strands and then we called it quits.

Nonetheless, it turned out great. We had the best time talking about each ornament we put up too. I have received a new ornament every year, ever since I was a baby and still have a couple I made in school. One has a picture of me with a mushroom haircut. Jake pointed at it and said to Molli, "Do you know who that is?"

Molli replied, "No, who?"

Jake, "It's mom!"

Molli looked at it thoughtfully and very tenderly (okay, she was pretty blunt with some disgust in her voice) said, "She looks like a boy!"

This is where I insert a message to my mother:
Dear Mom,
Why did I have to have a mushroom haircut through most of my childhood? I even remember when we permed it!! That's just sick and wrong!!!
Love,
Me

The funny thing is that Jake and I had a perm at around the same time period... his Dad as well!! Ha ha ha ha! Thank heavens for changing styles.

Last year, we had two Christmas trees. A cheap fake one upstairs where the kids put all our old ornaments on and a real one downstairs that I color coordinated with decorations. I have to say that I'm so glad I got that out of my system because I look at our tree today and every ornament has a memory. I would sit and tell the kids about each ornament as they hung it up and it was so fun to remember. That's a part of Christmas that I think is so very important - memories.

I would try to hide some of our old Christmas decorations that are tacky, in unnoticeable places. But this year, as they were pulled out of the boxes, I was so very grateful for them. I hung Granny Hartley's cheesy towel Rudolph door hanger on our front door. Jake hung his felt "Merry Christmas" sign with sequins, loud and proud across our main windows in the front room. Gage's wreath, made of plastic ziplocks, hangs proudly on our book shelf, and so much more. I looked at a ceramic statue of carolers singing, that Granny Hartley painted, and on the bottom it has etched "'63". She made it in 1963. I wonder if she ever thought it would mean so much to one of her grandchildren to have it?

And then there's Daxlee, doing what she does best when everyone else is hard a work.
If you will remember last year, Jake had an awesome "Christmas poncho" that we made out of a tree skirt. When we pulled it out, EVERYONE had to have a twirl in it.