Getting Ready for Christmas

Ok, I have had my decorations up since before Thanksgiving and I am just now blogging them. Since the main reason that I blog is to journal and/or scrapbook these wonderful times with my sweet SamBo, I decided better late than never. Sooo, here are some pics of the process and the results :)

Getting it all down...
As we were getting down the decorations from the attic, Sammy found a little red rocking horse. It's really small and supposed to be used for decoration, not as a toy. I laughed out loud when I turned around and found his little bottom wedged in it, rocking back and forth.

The outside...
After getting everything down, it was time to decorate the outside of the house. The plan was for Matt to do the outside while I did the tree. As it turned out, Matt finished the outside as planned and I successfully spent the entire day complaining about how I didn't want to go inside and "fluff" the incredibly painful, stiff artificial branches.

Sam sat in the back of Daddy's truck and watched as Matt did the work.

This was Sam's reaction when we turned on the lights. We switched to colored lights this year in efforts to make it more gingerbread like. Sam thought there were little "ball balls" as he calls them, all around the house.

Next, it was time to decorate the tree...
I love this picture and his sweet little hand. (Although he looks like he is innocently placing an ornament amist the tree, he is most likely getting a good grip so he can rip it off)

Later, I walked up and found him looking at this sweet little picture of himself from last year and saying, "Sssssss". That's how he says Sam. It's an ornament that says, "Baby's 1st Christmas".

While I was doing the awful chore of fluffing the mashed down branches, he came over and had a little seat in my lap.

After the beat down of the branches was finished, I bit the bullet and decorated it. Sam helped :)

This year, I added big candy-like pieces to go with the whimsical candy house theme.

At first glance, this seems like a sweet little picture of a sweet little boy. If you look a little closer, you can see that little mischevious gleam in his eye that says, "Go ahead and go back in the kitchen, I'm not going to do anything."
All finished. We added new stockings this year but didn't manage to get the names on them. Oh well, maybe next year.
This T'was The Night Before Christmas book was the first one that my dad started reading when my oldest brother was an infant. He's 42 now and my dad has read us the story every Christmas Eve since then (another post to come after Christmas this year)