Christmas Traditions

We had a weekend full of Christmas traditions.  We finally got the tree up on Friday morning.  It took me all morning to get it out of the box, straighten the branches and get the lights in working order - but it's up!  Ashtyn LOVED the Christmas tree- she's been asking me for days now - "When we have Christmas tree?"  She hung out under the tree the rest of the morning...

Eli even thought the tree was pretty cool.  I had him laying on the couch so he could watch me and he scooted all the way to the end and then reached out to the branches and proceeded to shake them.  It's a good thing he's not mobile yet or I don't think we would have a tree up this year.

Eli was fussy on that morning - what's new though!  So I thought the only way to finish getting the tree up was to put him in the baby carrier, which seemed to suffice until I bent over and one of the tree branches stuck him in the eye - Whoops! But once the tree was in working order I put him in front of it and it kept him content for quite a while.  He sat there and just screamed at the tree - happy screaming though!

I finished decorating the tree Friday night after the kids went to bed - I wanted to enjoy this part and I am neurotic when it comes to the placement of ornaments and so on...So when Ashtyn came down the stairs Saturday morning she was very surprised.  She said "Oh, that look so pretty mommy - good job!"  She was so memorized by the tree.  She just sat there and looked at it for a good 20 minutes.  Then she starting playing with the ornaments, so we had to have a little chat about not touching, just looking!  Hopefully all the ornaments will stay in one piece...

On Sunday we went over to Mimi's house to make Christmas cookies with all the Aunts and Cousins - another Christmas tradition.  Ashtyn once again was the "sprinkle" girl!  Brooke and Ashtyn did great at adding the sprinkles to the sugar cookies - I think Mimi approved, except when we did orange sprinkles, that didn't go over that well.  Apparently orange is not an approved Christmas color! 

We made a ton of cookies as usual - and by "We" I mean my aunts (I was on baby duty the whole time) so the credit is all to them.  It was different this year though with Pam and the girls in Mexico.  I am sure they were having fun, but we definitely missed their company.  The cookies are delicious and beautiful as always - YUM!