It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Years ago Aaron and I used to always put up our Christmas tree on the first day of December. I always wanted to put it up earlier, but Aaron would say it was 'bad luck' and would make me hang out till the 1st. After Jay was born we started to go to the Christmas parade in town every year. It is always held on the last Saturday in November. I would get home and be in a real Christmas mood after the parade and finally convinced Aaron that putting up the tree on the same day was a nice way to finish off the day.

So our tradition for the last 6 years or so has been to put our tree up after the Christmas parade. Mum and Dad popped in to visit after the parade, so they were 'lucky' as they got to help us too. We always put Christmas carols on while we are doing it. Mum kept saying she should have brought out the old Muppets Christmas record that we used to play as kids while we were putting up the tree. Thank goodness she didn't and that we don't have a record player! As little kids we loved it, but as we got older we were very over it :) Sorry Mum!

Aaron brought the tree and all the decorations up from the garage. Every year we have the same jobs. Aaron puts the tree up and the boys and I decorate it, while he puts up all the other Christmas lights and puts out all the other Christmas ornaments etc around the house. Aaron got sick of me being so picky about where to put each decoration on the tree and gave up on doing that years ago! :)

As Aaron put the tree up he realised that heaps of the plastic that the branches slip into was broken. They plastic just kept snapping! It was actually a really nice tree that we bought from Chickenfeed a few years back - no wonder it was so cheap!

We left the boys with Dad, while Mum, Aaron and I went down to Kmart to buy a new tree. We got one that doesn't have plastic on it. Hopefully this one will last a lot longer!

Harri was very excited to help out this year. It was the first year that he really knew what was going on and all morning he kept saying 'go and do the Christmas tree?', as we had been telling him we would do the tree after the parade. Another tradition that we have is to buy the boys a new decoration for the tree each year. We write their names on their decoration and the year and it is their job to put their own decorations up. Jay loves working out how old he would have been each year that he got the decoration. Harri was excited as he knew that whenever there was an decoration with Noah's name, he could help to put it up.

Mum was a great help, especially doing the worst part - putting on the lights.

The boys loved putting all the balls up. The last couple of years we have gone with a red and gold kind of theme. I was wanting to just leave it plain with red and gold balls, lights, beads and red bows but I felt sad that the boys decorations wouldn't be used, so we ended up putting those on too.

There was a big argument between Harri and Jay about who was going to put the star on the top. Jay won as he had asked first. I have never had to worry about things like that before this year! Looks like next year will be Harri's turn.

Grandpa and Noah both decided that it was a good time to have a nap. Grandpa used some excuse about his shunt not working properly :) I didn't even think about getting a photo of him asleep on Harri's bed for evidence of how much he helped out. Noah woke up from time to time to make sure we were doing it all okay.

It took ages, but we were very happy with the finished product.


Mum and Dad ended up staying for tea. It was a really nice afternoon - a great way to finish off a great morning at the parade.