Tis The Season....

I at least waited until December to blog about Christmas... but the reality is that my Christmas tree was up the week before Thanksgiving! (That's how I roll.)  I'm a bit of a Christmas freak, and that's my choice of words.  I will say that we didn't put lights outdoors until last night-- a few of our neighbors beat us to that, but it was a matter of securing outdoor lights (1st house... woot woot!) and deciding what exactly we wanted to do with them. 

 Leeland has his very own Christmas tree in his room this year-- a Target special.  It's only 4 feet tall, pre-lit with an array of colors.  He was and is still so excited about it... not sure how we'll talk him into letting us put it away once Christmas is over.  It has a few blue ornaments on it, but we mostly got it so that it can be our Jesse Tree.  You can read about how we started the Jesse Tree tradition last year here.  This year we've graduated up a bit and have a full set of handmade ornaments as opposed to the paper ones-- we did a Jesse Tree ornament exchange with MOPS.  It was so fun and such a neat thing to have, I hope to do a 2nd set next year so that both boys can have them when they move out and begin their own family traditions.

 Putting the man to work- cleaning gutters and hanging lights at the same time.... he's a keeper! ;)

 A view of our Christmas lights from the front yard.  We ended up going with Icicle lights this year, because they were gifted to us and therefore free.  I think they look beautiful and they really light up the house.

 Twinkle, twinkle! So beautiful!  Still no Christmas wreath on the door because I'm so hooked on my mustard yellow yarn wreath that I made which you can see here. 

The littlest Kroh walks with assistance!  Slow down baby Kroh!  Just couldn't resist posting this happy smile.

 Our Christmas tree-- and you can see the hand print salt dough ornaments we made of the boys.  The green is Hayden's and the red is Leeland's.  Leeland actually helped making the salt dough and he had so much fun "rolling out the pizza."  This is the perfect age!  He just wants to help with everything and it's so sweet.

A bannister to decorate? Say what!  Another year of my Starbucks recycles-- those little red mittens that I hang everywhere each year were left over from Starbucks after Christmas one year, there original purpose was to hold gift cards.  The little red stockings had gingerbread biscottis in them. (Yum!)