'Tis The Season

The tree is up.
It is beautiful.

LLB and I spent a long time hanging ornaments yesterday. We got help from Mr. after dinner. LLB was humming along to the music while she was stretched out under the tree hanging ornaments on the back and lower branches. I had to pull her out by her feet... That, my friends, is the stuff of which memories are made. We had a lovely time remembering each and every ornament - especially the particularly elementary ones.

Our special silver tree is up and decorated. It has all of our favorite ornaments on it including the glass reindeer I've had since college, the Lladro balls from the children's birth years, and a giraffe ballerina complete with toe shoes and tutu.

The presents that were purchased on Friday and Saturday during my hunting session are wrapped and under the tree. Most of the rest of the presents have been ordered and are being sent somewhere. I sure hope I sent the heavy stuff here and the light stuff to Nicole's. At this point I have no idea what is going where.

The Advent calendars are ready to go. LLB helped me put our new Playmobil Advent calendar together yesterday. It's the forest friends one... the animals are sooo cute! Our other Advent calendar is wooden and was a gift from Gram and Grandpa.

Almost all of the candles are in the windows... I'm missing 2 and I need batteries for the 2 in the garage - Those would be c sized batteries for those of you who would like to take care of that for me.

The stockings have been hung. Zeb's is ready to go. (We are leaving Zeb with a dear friend while we are gone to Nicole's. He has to have his stocking to open on Christmas day!)

The house is still pretty upside down. The tree coffin is standing in the hallway. The ornament boxes are piled in the living room. There are a few tissue remnants on the living room floor from when Poppy decided it would be fun to leap into our pile of ornament wrapping and fling it everywhere.

Oh.. and the gutters are clean. You didn't know that gutter cleaning was part of Christmas decorating, did you? My butt and my legs are still screaming from all the up and down the ladder I did on Saturday afternoon.

So.. what's left? After a couple of ibuprofen and a cup of tea, I have one more order to place and then I'm done. I have some things to wrap when they arrive, a house to get together, a couple of gingerbread houses to build, and a party to plan. We have the typical running around to do: concerts to attend, district auditions to get to, and Nutcracker to get through.

That said, I think I can sit back and enjoy the season.