Decorating the Tree, With A Little Nostalgia

We have had a fun-packed Christmas-y weekend! Saturday morning we went and picked out our Christmas tree. We found a little place just down the road from us that was selling Douglas Fir trees for $15! Nice! I had grand plans to get some cute pictures with Collette while we were picking out our tree, but she has still been extra tired and she fell asleep in the car on the way there. Plus, it was COLD, with snow flurries, so we didn't want to get Collette out of the nice warm car. When we went to put the tree in the van, the top of the tree was resting almost on Collette's car seat! Poor baby didn't even budge. LOL. So here are the pictures of Collette and the tree:



Saturday night we went to a Christmas party. When I worked as a therapist in PA, I worked at a small outpatient/partial program, with a staff of 5-6. One has moved away to Oregon, but the rest of us are (relatively) local, and try to get together at least a few times a year. Our former boss, Claire, hosts a great Christmas party every year. It was so fun to see everyone (including the only other Colette I know)! Here is our group shot:

Back row: Colette and Claire,front row: Collette, me, Lexi (Colette's daughter), Aimee, and Jo Anne. We tried 6 times to get a picture of Aimee with her eyes open, but to no avail. LOL.

Collette had a great time playing on Claire's stairs. She would cry every time we made her get down!



Last night Collette was up a lot and fussy,and still seemed like she was under the weather, so we didn't bring her to church this morning. LL volunteered to stay home with her while I went to church. Since she is a TOTAL Daddy's girl, she loved the chance to stay home and snuggle with daddy.


After church we FINALLY got a Christmas-card-worthy-picture of Collette!! She moves sooo fast these days, and my camera is on it's way out, so my shutter-speed with the flash is on sooooooooooo sloooooooow that I kept missing shots. And since she has been sick, she has been in NO MOOD for pictures. But thankfully we got a good one today. After we get our cards sent out (we ordered them today), I will post the pictures. :o)

Tonight we decorated our tree. After much debate, we decided to put the tree in our dinning room/entry way. This is the room we use the least on a daily basis, but it is the middle room in our house, so we see it and go through it a lot (does that make sense?) We can put up our baby gates to keep Collette out of there when we aren't with her, and since we never really play in there, hopefully it will work out well. Of course, as an added precaution, we didn't put any breakable ornaments or any ornaments on hooks in the bottom few feet of the tree. Hopefully it will work!

Just like last year, Collette got to play with the lights (under supervision, of course!) Here she was last year:

(Can you even believe it?!?)

And tonight:




Collette also helped Daddy put on ornaments, just like last year:


Tonight:



Holding the "My Daddy is the Best Veterinarian in the World" ornament she got him for last Christmas:


And Collette helped with another other tradition-- putting on the star.

Last year she was too little to help:



But tonight she was a big helper!



Hopefully I can get the rest of the house decorated this week!I'll post pics of the finished tree and everything all the other Christmas decorations in another post. I have 30 research papers to grade and my last class for the semester this Thursday, then the final next week, and I will be done for the semester. Hooray!