It's beginning to look alot like CHRISTmas!

And yes..... I said ...Christmas!! It may not be politically correct but I am sticking my ground...it is about CHRISTmas not anyone/anything else.

ok...off the soapbox and back to our tree decorating..... enjoy the pics.

Jessi and Sydney putting ornaments on the tree and maybe in the same spot that

they put the last 3 they put up. But you know what, that is just fine. They had such

a great time. Todd and I put the tree up and it was so easy, last year we had to buy a new tree and found a great deal on this one at Kmart right at Thanksgiving and it is prelit and it even turns---who knew!! Loving it!!

One of our CHRISTmas traditions is buying each child a personalized and dated ornament and we also buy a family ornament. Nana also buys each of the kids an ornament so, they each have quite a collection (except Jessi --she has only had 3 Christmas celebrations so far). Todd passed out ornaments to the kids and let them reminese about why they picked out the ornament and what they thought was so neat about them. One of Tanner's favorite is one that is a buck holding a shotgun standing beside a sign that says "People Season"--it makes him laugh every year or maybe it is the one that looks like a deer antler (sent to him from our friends in Texas). Sydney's favorite ( I think--because every ornament she picked up was her favorite--she is so funny and loves life!) is the one that is in the shape of a star and says "I Love Gymnastics" and has a gymnast doing a flip or maybe the Hello Kitty ornament. I KNOW Jessi's is the pink princess castle--it almost didn't make it on the tree, she just wanted to hold onto it and look at it.

Sydney holding our family ornament from 2005. We all go ornament shopping and everyone picks out their personal ornament and then we come back together and pickout a family ornament together--sometimes we have to vote--ha !

Tanner doing his part! As we decorated the tree we listened to CHRISTmas Carols and afterward we turned the lights on, Todd fixed hot chocolate (WITH MARSHMALLOS!!) and we just sat back and enjoyed the view and talked about how this CHRISTmas is going to mean so much more to Tanner since he just asked Jesus into his heart the night before. He is going to gain such a much greater understanding of what Jesus did for him. What a joy!!