Merry Christmas!

The day after Thanksgiving: most know it as Black Friday. In our house, it's Christmas! As soon as I get up, Christmas decorating begins. I'm the self-appointed chairman of the decorating committee with lots of very eager and willing helpers! First someone (usually Knut) takes everything from the pantry floor so we can access the closet behind the pantry where we keep all the Christmas decorations. Next we bring all the decorations to the living room so we can put the pantry back together. We organize the decorations into piles: the tree decorations in the corner to wait until we can get a Christmas tree, the Christmas village boxes stacked neatly beside the piano, and everything else on the couch. 'Everything else' is usually put up first:

 the greenery for the front stair railings,

the Advent wreath,

the embroidered stockings Mom makes for each of us, the red candles, etc.

Next is the Christmas village. This year we used cotton stuffing to make 'snow'. It took quite awhile, but it looks much more real than the crimson velvet cloth underneath! :)

Later in the afternoon, we went to get a Christmas tree! We had a lot of delays before we actually got out there. Our departure was postponed twice so Bjorn could have a good nap, and then a third time because the people who used to live in our house came by and asked if they could look around. Then the first Christmas tree farm we went to was closed, so we had to go to a second. When we finally got out there, we found a perfect Christmas tree almost at once. Knut and I cut it down, with everyone else yelling, 'hurry up!' and 'Christmas is over!' and laughing. I noticed that they didn't get down under those low, prickly branches to help. :D

When we got back home, we had dinner and then decorated the Christmas tree.

When we had finished, Cecily put on the star at the same time as Knut plugged in the colored lights, Gloria plugged in the light for the star, and Thor plugged in the Christmas village lights... and Cecily almost fell over the railing on the stairs as she tried to get the star to stay in its place. :D I finally had to tie the base of it onto the branch with a cord.

When the house was completely decorated for Christmas, we proceeded to exchange gifts with Grandpa and Grandma since they won't be here for Christmas. At bedtime we said goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma since they will be leaving early tomorrow morning before any of us are up. That's kind of a sad note to end this blog post on, but at least we will see them again this spring.

Merry Christmas!