It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

This weekend has been filled with none other than... decorating for Christmas. I love all our decorations. It's been really fun doing two trees this year! Last year, traveling so close to Christmas, we hardly did any decorations, so it's been good to get them ALL out this year! My favorite decorations have always been our Snow Villages. We have so many that we now have 5 tables with little streets. One street has 2 houses and an ice skating rink. That's probably my favorite just because the ice skating rink has always been my favorite, as the skaters move! We have the log cabin house with the pond and campfire, too. We also have our peppermint house, which is upstairs. Then there's the little street with the baby shop, wedding chapel, and Hersheys shop. Last but not least, there are the restaurants street... Krispy Kreme and a diner. Then there's our trees. The fake one is in the family room. It has prestrung white lights, but we always add a few of the big, retro colored lights as well. That is pretty much our mish mash tree. It has every ornament we have on it, besides the really nice ones. From homemade ornaments to gifts to just ornaments we've collected through the years... Our real tree is in the dining room. I love it. I forget how nice real trees are. That is our nicer one. It has only white lights and has not that many ornaments. My mom used to needlepoint ornaments, and all of those are on it as well as nicer glass ones, and of course our favorite closianne teapot ornament from Beijing! My other favorite ornament is too fragile to be on a tree, so we have it on an ornament stand. It's of a little boy and girl pulling a sled with the Christmas tree in it, through the snow. I bought it for my mom when my school went to the mountains in 4th grade. It's painted in the inside and I absolutely love that ornament. I have always been the one to decorate our tree(s), and the tradition continued this year. Our count down to Christmas thing (I am forgetting the name- agh!) I always have good memories with. I think it's really pretty. All the pieces are in little cabinets and you open it and pull it out and read about it and hang it. AnnaClaire has enjoyed doing it these first 2 days of December! We also have other pretty decorations throughout our house. One of my favorite (and new editions this year) is a little picture of santa. There's a picture of it that I added. It's really special because our guides gave it to us before we left China. I absolutely love it and it always reminds me of our trip. We also have a red fish one that they gave us, which will take its spot when Christmas is over. Another new edition this year is our advent wreath! It is so pretty. We did the first day of advent today and ate Christmas cookies and hot chocolate and read the verses. So that's our new tradition which I'm excited about. Then of course we have our SIX stockings. Another fun thing we have is our carolers. Mom has collected them for awhile. At some point we want to have the whole family. We are missing Will and AnnaClaire, and I guess we should be on the lookout for a Kate now, too! We have those on the piano and I absolutely love them. I also put up a little tree in my room which I love. So I just wanted to talk about our Christmas stuff, because it's the most wonderful time of the year, and last year we didn't do much besides the tree, because of China and all. I love Christmastime! AnnaClaire has loved getting ready, too. She loved helping me with the trees and her all time favorite is our Christmas train! Oh we also have the outside of our house all done up with wreaths, candles, and garland, but it's not totally done yet, so I'll add pictures of it another day. I'll do another post later with more about the adoption!