A fun Saturday, Part 2

When the kids woke from their naps, they were thrilled to see that the decorations were being hung outside.  I promised them that we would go out and they could have a special treat if they would just do one thing for me:  pose for some Christmas card pictures.  Anticipating the frustration that might come, I decided I wasn't going to get upset if the pictures were less than stellar, and I was not going to freak out at my kids to "JUST LOOK HERE AND SMILE!" I limited myself to a quick 15 minutes of photography, knowing that if it didn't happen in that time span, nothing good was going to come out of going longer.  These are two that I didn't pick:

I was thrilled that the weather was so nice, so after changing back into "regular" clothes and as darkness began to fall (which seems to be so early these days), the kids and I took a nice walking tour of the neighborhood Christmas displays.  We came in for dinner, and then came what they had really been waiting for: decorating the Christmas tree.  This year, they were more involved than ever.  Cortlan was bound and determined to hang the ornaments high, and used the step stool as often as he could.  Everly was bound and determined to take as many ornaments over to the tree as possible, but was more interested in handing them to John than she was in actually hanging them.  I unpacked them as quickly as I could and we managed, for the first time, to get the tree entirely decorated without me having to finish it after the kids were in bed.

Cortlan put the star on.