Decorating

I swore I wouldn't be one of "those" people who decorated before Thanksgiving.  It really bugs me how the holiday season starts the day after Halloween (or sooner!) and pretty much skips Thanksgiving.  As one of my little flip devotional calendars says, "I have a love affair going with Thanksgiving.  It seems to blend together all we Americans hold precious and dear--without the sham and plastic mask of commercialism." (Chuck Swindoll)  But a certain little three year old someone asked if we could get a Christmas tree, "Pleeeease, please, please, please!" so I just had to get him to convince Daddy to drag all the boxes down from the attic.  Jason hates having things decorated too early, and usually it really bugs me, too.  But this year we decided that since our very conservative church had semi decorated early, and since Thanksgiving fell a week later than normal, it would be okay.  Reid was elated to "help" Daddy get out the tree.  This was his idea of how our tree should look.

But when he learned that it was just the top portion, he was even more excited!  I emptied all the boxes except for the ornaments and decorated the house.  By then, I was just too tired to fluff and decorate the tree.  Putting on the ornaments and reminiscing about all the photo ornaments and sentimental things (while listening to Christmas music, of course!) is my favorite part and I didn't want to rush it, so I saved it for the next morning. Of course, I also love setting up the little Precious Moments nativity scene and was elated that Reid knew who Baby Jesus was!  We are really trying to instill the real reason for CHRISTmas...but with a three year old and all the commercial stuff, it's not as easy as it sounds.  But I digress...my little helper noticed I was putting on ribbon, so he found a roll of his own ribbon and decided to "help."  Notice his help required the step stool, which he finds any reason to use.

He took his job very seriously, carefully and meticulously arranging his own ribbon.

 Tada!!  Beautiful, huh?  ;)  I wasn't allowed to help him or rearrange his masterpiece.  He also insisted upon helping me with the ornaments, which made me a tad bit nervous since most of them are glass.  But he was very careful and so far, not a single one is broken.  He didn't quite get the part about spacing them out on the tree at first:

 And then when he did, they were pretty much all on the very bottom most branches.  Most of these are my unbreakable ornaments, so I didn't mind.

"Mommy, our tree looks pretty!"

 The day of the A&M-v-LSU game, we had been invited to pretty much downtown Dallas for a game watching party.  I was just plain too tired plus it was in the middle of Reid's nap time, so we convinced Jason to go have fun.  Jason dressed him in a cute football hoodie, but after nap time I couldn't resist changing him into some Aggie gear.  It took a million pictures (my phone's camera is s-l-o-w!) to get a cute one where he was looking at me and had his gig 'em up, but I finally got one ready for the next time the Aggies scored and texted it to Jason.  Some friendly family rivalry, hee hee!  Reid and I had fun eating popcorn and watching the game together, even though A&M didn't score enough points to win.  Luckily for me, Jason and I hadn't made a wager on this game...traditionally, whoever's team loses has to make the winner breakfast in bed or something along those lines.

 Our not-so-little guy has developed quite the imagination and has a creative side.  He's made up his own words for a few things, created nicknames (Jill, who walks him into his preschool class at school, has become "Jilly Willy"...all his idea), and has found unusual uses for everyday objects to be imaginative tools for things other than what they were designed for.  It cracks us up on a daily basis.  I think on my last post I commented on how he decided Mommy needed "friends" to sleep with so he makes sure these cute little critters lined up on my bed each night.  He's been obsessed with the little rubber band bracelets all the kids love right now, so once he decided one was going to be a necklace for friend #4, the rest of my friends needed one, too.  He had six bracelets, so all six friends got a necklace.  Then, he decided he wanted to sleep with Mommy's friend #4 (for some reason, #4 is his favorite, so he always does everything before the other friends), then all six of them.  So lucky me...I now get his friends all lined up on my bed, and he gets these little guys.  Crazy boy.