Putting up the Christmas Tree

It was so fun watching them really debate over where to put the ornaments

Maddox with a stocking on his foot, his hand and an easter basket on his head

The Tree-before

The Tree-After

Sofia putting on the star

Maddox's Eyes Were Priceless

It has always been a tradition in our family to put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. I could NOT wait to get all of our Christmas stuff up that I hadn't seen in almost two years. We had even diligently packed an artificial tree that we had purchased at the after-Christmas sale two years ago.

We got the Christmas music going (Amy Grant was also another tradition of ours) and pulled out the boxes. I left to go run somewhere while Lee put the tree together so I didn't see it until I got home. When I walked into the living room to begin putting up the decorations on our new tree I went into SHOCK. First of all this was the first artificial tree I've ever had in my life and then this tree was so short Sofia could have just put up the star without being lifted up (ok, that's a little exaggeration but I was in dramatic mode.)

Sofia was so excited to get started and the difference of the tree didn't even phase her. Maddox was jumping up and down with joy to put something on the tree (so excited he broke two of my ornaments :( ) and all I could do was fight back tears.

I was already having a little bit of a downer day on Friday because I was missing our families and I think the start of all the holidays without being settled into our home yet was getting to me a little. As you can probably imagine, I'm a "traditions" person. The neat thing about this year is we will be in our own home and be able to start our own traditions but the hard part is when all the presents are open by 8am that morning there isn't anyone to have our huge breakfast with or go to our grandparents houses, or play games with our family. Eventually we will have lots of Peruvian friends to do this with but this year I think it will be a little hard.

I'm know a year from now I will look back at this post and go "MAN, what was I thinking? This is awesome and this time around we have all those Peruvian friends to be with." When I started posting over a year ago I decided this would not be one of those happy blogs. I really wanted to share the good, the bad and the ugly. Especially while we are away from our friends and family, I wanted to be able to really share my heart, my joys and everything else that came with our life here in Peru. That being said I turned pretty ugly about 30 minutes into our tree decorating. I started crying and felt like the whole night was going to pots. The kids didn't like the Christmas movie we had chosen to download for them on I-tunes (so that was a waste of money), I had forgotten to get the popcorn and hot chocolate at the store and neither of us wanted to walk 30 minutes in the dark to go get some, the transformer for the lights wasn't the right size and it started melting the plug and half my ornaments wouldn't fit the mini tree!

We tried to salvage it by ordering Little Ceasars pizza that was delivered on a little motorcycle and ended up ending on a good note. The kids had fun, my tears dried up and when I layed down by Maddox that night he said with such a dramatic look on his face "mom I wuv you just SO much!" Gotta love those kids.