My Little Helpers

One of my favorite days of the year is getting the Christmas tree. Growing up, my family would drive to the mountains, to a tree farm and my dad would cut down a tree. It was so fun...getting bundled up in the car under blankets, singing Christmas carols, running amongst the aisles of all the trees, and finding the perfect one. Then we'd go home & decorate the tree all together with Christmas music playing in the background. There might have been some hot chocolate involved as well. Oh how I love hot chocolate (with extra marshmellows)!

Well, Greg & I have changed the tradition a little bit, since the sight of Greg sawing down a tree is just NOT my idea of fun (nor do I think does that sounds very safe). And, there aren't many tree farms nearby that have Frasier Firs (yes, I'm a Christmas tree snob). So, now, we just go to Lowes!! :) We get a 7-8 foot tree and Greg always lugs it home in "Rosie," with part of it sticking out the window, looking completely ridiculous. Then we decorate the tree together - well, I string the lights on and Greg just sits by b/c usually it involves multiple tries and lots of cussing. And we have my favorite Christmas music playing in the background of course. I love pulling out all the ornaments and reminiscing about what each one is from or means to me. (I know this might slightly annoy Greg, but it's a Gibbs tradition!) Luckily, Joyce gave me a few childhood ones of Greg's last year, so finally, he has some "memories" on the tree too!

This was the first year that Nate really wanted to help decorate the tree. And, lo & behold, my 3-yr-old started a new tradition himself! He insisted we all wear reindeer antlers or Santa hats while we were decorating. I loved it, and surprisingly, Greg did too! In fact, he wore the Santa hat almost all day!! :)



We decided to start another new tradition, and let the kids put the angel on the tree. This year was Nate's turn, obviously. He felt so important!!

And in order to keep him occupied while I was doing the lights, I gave him a project - organizing/sorting all of the ornaments. As you can see, he just transferred them from one pile to another. Great job, N.

He really did help though, and was super proud of his cluster of 600 ornaments right in front of the tree, which Mommy had to tweak just a little bit! At one point, he had to stop and take a break, b/c as he declared "This is hard work, Mommy!" Then 2 minutes later, I hear "Good job, Mommy!" Such a little cheerleader :)

Surprisingly, Abby wasn't too interested in the tree-decorating process. She has designated a few chosen ornaments on the bottom of the tree that she likes to munch on, but so far that is it.

Nate is VERY into all things Christmas this year, and it's so fun to see his excitement. I give the kids a Hallmark ornament each year (yet another tradition I stole from my Mom), and when Nate saw his Elmo one from 2008 and Mickey one from 2009, he was THRILLED. We also had fun looking back on the photo ornaments from each year. Hard to believe they were ever so little!! It definitely took 3x as long this year to decorate, but was 3x as fun!