Family Matters

It's that time of year--time to get out all the Christmas decorations and figure out where to put them in our littler house.

Everything seemed to fit better in our previous home.  It was a bigger house, or at least it seemed so.  There was room for every decoration I lovingly made for our family. 

Now, it seems like there are fewer walls to hang things on (an open floor plan will do that) and I just don't really care to get it all out. 

Then came Luci.  She wants it all out!  She wants every inch of the house to look "Christmassy." 

I had to talk her into waiting until the Sunday after Thanksgiving to put up Christmas lights outdoors.  We don't do a whole lot out front.  We are not in a traditional neighborhood--we are out in the country and houses have quite a bit of distance between them.   

The appointed day came and went with Luci's protests.  "It's supposed to be TODAY!"  Finally, we had a day where Dad and one big brother were home to help.  Luci was not happy that we were missing one kid.  John dragged the garland and a little Santa and two reindeer from the basement and we set to work.

Big brother Bryan was at a friend's house.  JT was not wanting to participate, and sat on the steps telling us what we were doing wrong.  John wanted him to go inside, but I said that would just reward him by letting him play video games (which he would rather do) than help us.  So JT stayed outside and was miserable (and made us miserable, as well).  Luci was beside herself, since things were not going merrily the way she thought they should.

"It's a family activity!" was heard more than once from Luci. 

That's pretty funny, since I said that a long time ago--putting up yellow ribbons at the end of John's first deployment, I had a plan to put ribbons on each of the twenty trees in our front yard at our old house.  The boys were not helping.  I was frustrated and needed some extra hands.  I ran inside and told them (yelled, to be more precise), "This is a family activity!  Get out here!"  The yard looked great for John's first homecoming, especially nice since I had all that help from the boys.

What the yard looked like one year when we had snow:

Now we have green garland along the porch, but that's about the only difference.  Oh, and that it's 71* today and oh, I wish we had cold weather!  No chance of snow any time soon.

A few of the things we have out for that "Christmassy look" that Luci loves so well:

an advent calendar we got on our trip to Williamsburg in 2010

an advent calendar that I made in 1995 with instructions from Family Circle magazine

a Christmas card holder with a Mickey Mouse design, bought in 2007