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Here are a few pictures of us getting ready for Christmas.  We put up the tree and were a little relieved that Brendan still can’t quite crawl.  He can look at the tree and say “oh!” but that’s about it.  He really likes the train we put around the bottom of the tree.  We helped my mom put up her tree and took a picture of us and the cousins in front of it.  We also took a family picture in front of our tree.  We do this every year because we put the family picture in an ornament/frame and hang it on the tree.  Adam and I have discussed doing these family picture ornaments since we got married.  This is the first year they made it onto the tree.  It’s only been twelve years.  In our family picture, Jonathan is wearing the suit that he got when he was baptized.  He’s pretty close to being too big for it already.  We also had to teach Jonathan how to smile for this photo.  We had to practice not having the “crazy eyes” and the “glued on smile” that screamed, “I’m frozen in this position!”  He cried a little as we taught him this.  That’s why his eyes are just so darn “sparkly.”  Marissa is wearing the dress I made for her to match the headband in her hair.  Brendan is wearing the same off-white sweater that Jonathan wore at his age.  I can’t believe that we caught one where everyone is looking at the camera.

I’ve read three or four blog posts around the web recently that detail people putting up Christmas decorations. They all seem to have an air of guilt about using artificial Christmas trees. What’s the deal? A decent artificial tree runs around $200. A decent real tree runs around $30. That’s a 7 year payback if you don’t count the added cost in headaches of dealing with a real tree. Are they worried about the environment? Do people actually throw away their old fake trees? Growing up I’m pretty certain we had the same fake tree for about 15 years, maybe more and it got donated to a needy family when we were done. The first 8 or 9 years we were married we used a tree that was donated to us after serving for at least a dozen years in other capacities. I certainly don’t plan on throwing ours away for a long long time, and I will definitely recycle it when the time comes. Maybe I’ve missed the boat, but I stand proud and tall, just like my 7.5 foot imitation spruce.