A little early this year...

Christmas decorations came out a little earlier this year. I am ALWAYS the person that wants to celebrate Thanksgiving before bringing out the decorations and putting the tree up. Ever since I was little we would spend the day/weekend after Thanksgiving getting the house ready for Christmas. It's been tradition...

Well, I broke tradition this year. But for a very good reason---we would be gone over Thanksgiving visiting our dear friends, the Garretts, & I wanted to come home to a decorated house that was ready for the holidays.

So over a multiple weekends we got to work--first with our traditional tree. This tree gets decorated with our yearly ornaments. It has each of our First Christmas ornaments, family ornaments over the years, ornaments that the boys received as gifts & then the ones they pick out each year. This year it was all about Star Wars. They boys love to help when it comes to their ornaments.

Next up was bringing out the big guy. & man is it big--next year, I may not use the bottom of the tree and just start with the middle section and maybe not make it as tall---kind of just thought of that! It took us all to put this one together. I climbed on a ladder as Justin stood on the stairs to help me hoist the top section up. Then the boys took turns catching the lights as I tossed them their way.

Since this tree is so BIG, we have decided to start simple and add a few decorations each year--this year we added some pastel glass ornaments to our gold decor from last year. But sadly, I didn't take a picture of it when it was "complete".

Once the trees were up I moved onto the rest of the house, trying to bring a little Christmas into each room. Logan and I did a little shopping and added a few things here and there this year, not at all like our Halloween decorations though but hands down my favorite addition to our holiday decor were these...

Grammy Janet has had these images in her home for as long as I have been around and I am sure they predate me by many years. We finally asked her to make us a couple copies as we wanted to display them too. You see, that's Justin's mom on the right sitting on Santa's lap and that little boy on the left, well, that's his dad. Same year, same location. It's nice to have another reminder of Justin's dad in our home--he's someone we want the kiddos to feel like they know, even though they never got the change to meet him. He was a good man.