Christmas decorating

Annie has been asking since September if it was time to get out the Christmas decorations. Once or twice a week when we'd pull into the garage she'd see the storage boxes and be reminded again of Christmas. I told her we couldn't get out Christmas until after Halloween was over. So November 1st she was ready to decorate for Christmas. I managed to hold her off until a week before Thanksgiving. We pulled out one box and put up the trees. Annie decorated and redecorated.

 Then the Saturday before Thanksgiving we got out the ornaments and did the official decorating of the tree.

The kids get a new ornament each year, Here Annie and Rachel and I were going through their boxes as I told them (or they told me) about their various ornaments.

 Ryan would push the button on this favorite oversized ornament and Megan was excited to see the lights and hear the music.

 After checking our blog from last year to see whose turn it was to put the star on, Rachel got to top the tree off.

 The finished product:

 While the decorating was going on all morning, friends were dropping off pumpkin pies. A friend/neighbor of mine organized a Thanksgiving dinner for 300 low income/homeless, so I volunteered to gather 75 pies from church friends for it. It took 5 coolers and 2 boxes to transport them all. Ryan had a blast with the coolers. They apparently make for a good climbing toy. And a perfect platform for a performance.
Ryan has been doing this singing nonsense at the top of his lungs quite a bit lately. It's hilarious.
Here are the pies all loaded into the car:

Rachel and Annie went with me to deliver them downtown to the church where the dinner was to be held. They have a program going where homeless people, after a background check, and agreeing to terms and responsibilities, can stay in a kind of elongated cupboard, then after a month of that, if they do their jobs with helping serve lunch 3 times a week and helping with security, they can move to a tent, then after a bit longer still keeping all their responsibilities, they can move into a hut, about 8 ft square that they help to build. It's a pretty good little program.

Anyway, back to the decorating, on the day after Thanksgiving we started putting up our outside Christmas decorations. We got a late start, and by 12:30 or 1:00 we were dying of heat, so we packed it up to finish on Saturday. Saturday morning we got to work right after breakfast. The kids had a blast riding bikes while we worked. Here's Ryan on a quick food break:

We finally finished Saturday morning outside, then pulled out the rest of the inside Christmas decorations and put those up, and we were officially done with Christmas decorations. And now we get to sit back and listen to Christmas music and enjoy the feel of Christmas all December long. It's my favorite time of year. And now that we've put up a countdown to Christmas chain Annie has stopped asking several times a day, "When we go to sleep and then wake up is it going to be Christmas?" We all love Christmas, but Annie has a special case of Christmas excitement. :)