We're festive! (Finally.)

It appears that we've decorated for Christmas, though it's a bit by accident.

One year for Cooper's birthday (maybe even his first?), my mom asked me what she should get him. He would have been happy with a paper bag, so I suggested something I wanted him to have -- a Fisher Price nativity scene. It's fun to have out for him to play with (or knock onto the floor).
But that's a toy. It's not really decoration.

And then last year, Alan's mom brought us a couple of wreaths. Fake wreaths, which is good, or I would have killed them within days. And I couldn't very well throw away perfectly good wreaths, so I bought a Wreath Storage Bag. When I was downstairs finding the Fisher Price nativity scene, I grabbed the wreaths, too.

And then, after last Christmas, I came home from Lyons with this nativity scene:

My Mom made it (how long ago?) for her mom. It was always on top of Grandma Farm's television at Christmas. And as long as I'm putting up Cooper's nativity, I might as well get out the one that has sentimental value to me.

So now, it's starting to look a bit like we've decorated on purpose.

And then, the final straw -- our friends Michael and Kristen had an extra (fake) Christmas tree they no longer wanted. Yes, we'll take it off your hands, just in case in a few years we might decide we wanted to put up a tree.

BUT the box the tree was in wouldn't fit in our car. So we left the box at Michael and Kristen's house, and just loaded the tree branches into our front seat. Which we then had to unload when we got home.

Since we didn't have a container to store the tree, we figured we might as well just stand it up in the living room.

The tree would look funny just standing in the corner naked, so we dug out our box of ornaments -- "Our First Christmas," "Baby's First Christmas," a yellow digger for Cooper 2008 Christmas, ornaments with pictures of our cats.

And *poof* before we knew it, we had decorated for Christmas!