Decorating for Christmas...

We had a great Thanksgiving. We went down to mom and dad's and spent the day. It was filled with eating, visiting, and odds and end's. It was a peaceful relaxing day for us all.

This past Friday (after getting up at 4 am to get one item...shhhhh.... at walmart on the Black Friday sale) we decided it was time to get some decorations up inside the house. Jazmyn always loves this time of year. She thinks if we put up the tree then Christmas must be coming REALLY soon. The whole month away thing is really messing her up! She had a great time helping me put the tree together! This is one of my favorite current pictures of her! She is starting to look so grown up!

Here she is putting the branches on one by one.

Is it looking any better yet?

This is of course her favorite part. Over the past four years my mom and my sister got each child a Christmas ornament with their name and the year on it. It is so much fun to look back at the different ornaments over the past four years. This year was especially fun for Jazmyn because it was the first year that she was able to recognize her name and sissy's and bubby's names on all of the ornaments. She was so excited every time she found a name and she would proudly tell me whose name it was... "Mommy, this one says Anna"

...and after all that hard work, we went to bed and slept peacefully....UNTIL.....

the mischievous kitten that you see in the picture below named "Coconut" decided that the tree looked fun to climb on! I think it was about 5 am when I heard a thud...thinking that it was only the baby gate that the cat had probably knocked over....again....I simply stayed in bed. The dogs weren't barking so I knew it was not an intruder or anything to be alarmed of...lol. At about 7 when Jazmyn came to our room she declared quite loudly that "the Christmas tree fell alllll the way over!!!" I leaped out of bed to find the glass ornaments broken (luckily none with names on them) and tree limbs bent, and the base totally broken. OOPS...I had questioned how my daycare kids would tolerate not being able to touch the tree but had forgotten to think about rotten little"Coconut!" I can think of nothing else that could have made the tree fall, but Coconut.

Jeovany got out of bed and went to get a new base right away. We un-decorated the tree, fixed in into the new base, and then grudgetly redecorated the tree. Have I mentioned that I don't particularly like to decorate, although I love the end results? Well this year, lucky for Jazmyn, we got to decorate twice for the same end results!!

So far, the tree has safely made it through one night. We shall see how the next one goes.

Coconut has however torn the lighted greenery off of the stairs once already. Wow...what a season we are going to have. One that will not soon be forgotten I suppose.