Found!

We found our tree. Yes, it's fake and it looks beautiful all dressed up. All Christmas items were on sale at Joann's for 60% off, plus a 15% discount since I'm a teacher. :) We chose a small "potted" tree that was originally $89.00 and spent $33.00 for it. We brought it home, took it out of the box, fluffed it, and plugged it in. Done. :) I'm a big fan. Next year is going to be a breeze!

The kids had full reign on the decorations. Going through the ornaments every year is like a living scrapbook. Every single ornament is handmade or special in some way.

Now, one of our favorite Christmas time traditions is buying each child a special ornament that they receive when the tree is done. It gets a little tricky sometimes finding ornaments that fit each child's year, but this year we squeaked by. Alynna got a beautiful cat, because she likes to pretend she's a cat just about every day. Now trying to get a good picture of her with her ornament was hard! I had a good dozen of her face scrunched up and the ornament in fuzz from her moving it too much. Nathan got "Master Yoda". :) Kaeley was the hard one this year. We were looking for a bike or... we were open to suggestions. My back up plan was to purchase a Santa Claus to mark the year she discovered Santa Claus was not real. However, I got lucky with a toaster. :) The toaster reminded me of the morning she made everyone oatmeal, so I grabbed it and ran! The kids were happy. And our tree looks very charming.

Now Brad and I face a challenge. When we're empty-nesters we'll have about five ornaments to our name.

PS. Check out that funny bubble belly of mine. It looks rather deformed. I still think pregnancy is just a very strange idea. Whatever happened to the cabbage-patch?