Decorating the tree

So the day after my birthday is always the day we put up the tree (although I'll admit that last year I was too excited about Christmas that we put it up the day after Thanksgiving, and that was only because we spent all of Thanksgiving at our friends house -since we lived in New Mexico at the time we weren't near family, but we got to spend it with our awesome friends the O'Hara's, we've known them since right around the time we moved to Kansas many moons ago, 6 years to be exact, they happened to be the same unit as us, so when the unit got moved from KS to NM, both our family and their family ended up going. They are now in Germany and we miss them!)

Anyhow, sorry, off topic there. ;o) Since I was a little girl all I can remember is Christmas going up the day after Thanksgiving, so when it came time for my birthday (which is only a week after Thanksgiving) my birthday was always filled with Christmas decorations everywhere and everyone walked around talking about Christmas. In fact I have an old home video of my 4th? birthday where out of the 30 minute video, 20 minutes are of my dad video taping the Christmas decorations.

(O.k., I'm sure my birthday was about me when I was little and not all about Christmas, but to a 4 year old... just sayin')

So Jacob vowed when we got married that my birthday would always be seperate from Christmas. Even though we haven't stuck to that, and sometimes put the decorations up way before my birthday (like last year). This year we just didn't get around to it until the day after. It was such a fun night.

While I was out getting Tammy from school Jacob got out the tree. I spent the next hour "fluffing" the tree. You know, so there were few open spots. ;o) Later that evening, after dinner, we started decorating. I took some of the pictures, Tammy took some (Jacob's afraid of my camera, hehehe)

First, we start with our empty tree:

Next we plug it in to make sure the lights work:

Next comes the decorations:

Anyone notice on the right hand side there, Harry Potter with his invisibility cloak? ;o)

Jacob, jammin' out to Christmas music:

Our tree from the outside (we have added a little more to the outside, I need to go out and take another picture, plus, it snowed, a lot, so it looks so pretty!)

And the finished product:

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but Christmas, is a really really close second!!