Decorating the Tree

This year decorating the tree was definitely driven by James. He had so much fun decorating with Doug. I did help - don't get me wrong but if you ask  James who decorated the tree, he will say, "James and Daddy." C man takes up a lot of my time :) And to be honest, James was having such a great time that we kind of let him do his own thing. Doug and I did the breakable, sentimental and fancy ornaments but everything from Land of Nod that we raved about last year was arranged by one Mr. James. Yay for young boy (this almost made my cry) proof Christmas decorations! Each year we get ornaments just for that year and write our initials on them and the year. Doug and I did this for our first Christmas together in Chicago - 2001. This year we bought 4 ornaments :) Here they are:

Like I had said in an earlier post, decorating took three days. THREE DAYS. It was fun though. I don't think I've ever savored decorating a tree like that before. We first decorated at night. Friday night was the lights and James had so much fun. He unrolled the lights and tested them with Doug. He actually did a fantastic job listening to Doug and I was shocked that the lights did not get all tangled or anything - he is a great helper! He loves to do whatever his Daddy is doing.

Both the first and second days were really all about the stool. Standing on the stool, having a spotter :) Hanging the ornaments from the stool. All about the stool. Big guy stuff right there. The second day also was the hanging of the ornaments. James matched some (we had multiple sets) together so some spots on the tree were the red ones with dots and others were the green ones. It was really neat to see where he mapped everything out - it turned out beautifully actually.

we did manage to convince James that the 2 huge green sparkly ornaments on the bottom right could be spaced out :)

The third day was final touches - anything we had forgotten or left to do for later - James saved some of his ornaments. Savoring the experience people. Savoring. I don't have any photos from the third day. Like I said - James and Doug really spearheaded this and I was more on Cillian duty.

I do have to say that I think this year our tree was remarkable. It really is a beautiful tree. I love having a Christmas Tree in the house. I think James does too. We turn the lights on all the time. James looks at it and says, "Mom do you see how beautiful the tree is - it's so colorful." Yes it is. Wonderful job James!