Decorating for Christmas

Every year it takes us about a week to decorate the inside and outside of the house for Christmas. We have to rent scaffolding to light up the roofline. Eventually James gets to a point where he attaches a ladder to the scaffolding via ropes and ratchet straps and rests the other side of the ladder on part of the roof. Let me tell ya, it's the picture of safety! I always want to be home and for him to have his cell phone in his pocket when he gets to this part so if he falls, someone will hear him. We didn't come up with any new displays this year, we just recycled and re-used things from previous years. Hopefully next year we'll be able to get a bit more creative.

While we decorated, Tristan was hard at work putting as many nails and screws into blocks of styrofoam. He's totally into tools and was so determined to "fix it." He uses all the tools correctly, even the saw and we foresee that he will be very constructive and creative as he gets older. He's our little engineer. It was nice to set him up with an activity and have him work on it for hours and not have to constantly worry about where he was or if he was running into the street, etc. We tried to do the same with Genevieve by putting down a blanket with lots of toys, but she wasn't amused for nearly as long. Plus, she figured out how to pull parts of the blanket towards her so she could get to the leaves and put them in her mouth. Not quite what I had intended for her to have for lunch... She spent her day between the blanket, her exersaucer that we pulled outside and strapped to my back in the baby backpack. And yes, if you recognize that toy, the "Tuggy Tooter," it was James' toy as a child. We have quite a few of the Fisher-Price classics from his childhood. They certainly know how to build toys that withstand the test of time. These things are all still in great shape, although definitely loved, and still work as they are supposed to; the tugboat still toots, the house still dings when you pull it around and the cow (sort of) still moos.

My favorite parts of the lights are the huge wreath that we put on the garage and the polar bears that are skiing down the sides of the garage roof. You can't tell from the picture but we have several blow-ups, a big snowglobe (that can't be seen in the picture at all), large bells on the house, little snowmen that line the walkway, lighted poinsettia topiaries near the front door and many other small details. One picture was cool because you could see the moon and the lights on the house. In real life it was so bright, but the camera didn't really capture the scene as I'd hoped.

Inside is just as exciting although I don't have many pictures. We have lighted garland with red bows on the walls of most of the downstairs and the bannisters, the dining chandelier gets decorated, I have a village that gets set up and many other things.

We'll see what our neighbors think of our decorations...will we make it into the finalists for the neighborhood decorating contest?