Christmas is on its way!!!

We started decorating the front of our house a few weeks ago. I got some grief from our California friends about how early we were putting up our lights. But you know it does get cold here! ;-) We got almost all of them up before it turned really cold the last week and half. Here are some pictures for you:



Ella and I could hardly wait for Thanksgiving to be over before putting our Christmas trees up. That's right, you read that correctly, we have treeS, plural. Three to be exact! We have our tree from past years in the front window with generic, bought as a set, ornaments from Target. Then we have our deal of the century tree in the family room with our special ornaments that all relate to us somehow or someplace we've visited. The third tree is a little Princess tree we got on clearance after last Christmas. The girls have had a ton of fun decorating and redecorating that tree. They helped put the non-breakable ornaments on the other trees. It was very cute, they were all clustered along the bottom. But of course, anal person that I am, I rearranged them later. :-)



We went to Eden Prairie Center the Friday before Thanksgiving to see the arrival of Santa. We waited outside with a crowd of other parents and children and watched Santa arrive in a red wagon pulled by two real reindeer. All the kids were given jingle bells to shake while he rode by. We didn't wait in line to see him that day, but plan to go one day soon. We did pet the reindeer before we left though. Ella is VERY into Santa this year. While we were watching him arrive, she told me, "I want to see him fly, Mom." I told her that Santa only flew on Christmas Eve when he had to deliver all his presents. She also informed me that she was going to ask Santa for an Ariel Glitter Barbie doll and the Curious George Christmas book. I told her those were both very good things to ask Santa for (and easily findable for those little elves helping Santa make his purchases. ;-). When you ask Lily what she wants from Santa, she just says she's scared. She doesn't want to have anything to do with Santa, but informs us that it is okay for Ella to see Santa. Lily also calls Santa by the name of Ho Ho Ho.




So now that the house is all decked out, we're looking forward to more holiday fun the rest of the month!