Decorating the Jayne family Christmas tree

We were going to go get a Christmas tree last Sunday, but the girls decided that they would rather have me go get on during the week so that they could go play in the snow with our friends.  We all had a great time and all was fine.  Then Monday after work, the girls started asking constantly if I got a tree and if I was going to get it the next day.  They really wanted to decorate the tree and the house for Christmas.  Emma says it is her favorite day of the year every year.  I was finally able to get one during the day on Thursday and put it beside the house to torture the girls for a couple days.  It drove them crazy that we had a tree and it was just sitting outside by the house.  But we just did not have time to put it up, it was a busy end of the week.  Finally after getting home from watching the civil war football game at a friends house, we decided it was finally time. 

We got the many boxes of decorations out and got the tree stand out of the shed.  I trimmed up the bottom of the tree and put the stand on, then we had to rearrange the living room to make room for it.  Once that was done, I brought the tree in and stood it up.  Then, as I was trying to straighten it, I discovered that the stand was broken and the tree could not be straightened. So after a quick trip to a store that I really do not like, I had the tree standing up straight in a new stand.  While I was gone to the store, Brooke and the girls were able to get a bunch of the house decorations up.  Once the lights were on, the decorating began.  The 3 older girls put most of the ornaments on the tree and only one was broken in the process.  That was not a big deal because we have too many ornaments anyway.  I did the ones up high where they could not reach, then Brooke and I did some rearranging after they all went to bed.   Here are some pictures of the project.

Just getting started with rearranging the furniture.

Brooke did some vacuuming to cleanup as we went.  Leah liked this part the best.

This was Leah's contribution to the effort.

giddy-up!

Ready for the tree.

Getting the tree ready for stand number 2.

Time to start putting on the ornaments.

Lots more to go.

Riah getting ready to hang a sheep on the tree.

Sarah putting an ornament on her favorite branch.  She put a lot of them here.

It's done!

The finished product.

The tree is up and the house is decorated.  I guess we are ready for Christmas now and I can start looking forward to my favorite part of the Christmas tree.  Click here to see that story.  Once again we will continue to teach the girls that all this is fun and nice, but the real reason for the season is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ our savior.  We are celebrating God's love for us that he showed by sending his Son to be sacrificed for our sins and give us the opportunity to have eternal life with Him.  We try to teach the girls to look at this time as a time of giving and showing love to others and not a time of getting things.