We Decorate to the Extreme

This is our house. Yes, our gingerbread house, but it kind of looks like our real house too. Ok, well not really. But it isn't so far off the mark. We love Christmas decorations. I am actually not sure where this stemmed from in my case. My parents were never without a wreath on the front door, and I remember a childhood "chore" being the one who had to go around and plug in each of the candles in the lanterns every night (my mother can't believe that Mark and I leave ours plugged in all the time). But we never had lights on trees outside, or bushes. The inside was decorated, but I remember the tree always went up around the middle of December. Mark and I put our tree up here on the Friday after Thanksgiving. 

In fact, just the other night we agreed that our tree might not make it until Christmas with all the needles that it is quickly dropping (most of them, on my head as I crawl under it to water it every morning and night, as thankfully it is still drinking). This would be the first year that we had to get two trees for one location (we do have three threes in the house, so getting more than one tree is not that unusual for us actually). I can't imagine taking down the tree and all the decorations to just put it up again, so that would be a first.

The Christmas before Sadie was born, we were moving on December 27th. We were moving to a house whose property line was actually 12 feet from our then-current house. And in the Fan of Richmond, where houses are built on an eighth of an acre I think, saying we were "a stone's throw away" means literally that I could throw a stone, accurately, out of the dining room window of one house into the kitchen window of another, with little effort.  We still needed a moving company (most importantly to empty the attic of our first house, which was stuffed full with no easy way to get items out of, especially for a woman in her third trimester). 

But notwithstanding the move, and the fact that I was due with Sadie in March and had basically sworn off any activities that required any more exertion than growing said child, we decided to put up a Christmas tree at our old house. And since Mark was helping the movers move our belongings as well as finish the actual remodel of the new house (we moved in three weeks before the kitchen was usuable), I was the one in charge of decorating and undecorating the tree. It was still worth it. I remember standing in the old house with no furniture left in it, taking ornaments off of the tree, and thinking to myself that it was still worth it.

So far, this is the best Christmas we have ever had. Sadie's yet to catch anything more than a cold (knock on wood, she usually has an ear infection or strep by this week annually). And she is so into Christmas. Last year, I remember how she was learning Deck The Halls and singing it enough that we grabbed the video camera to preserve her newly understandable voice. This year she sings every song. And she randomly makes up her own songs, all of them praising the birth of Jesus Christ in some totally exaggerated way, while working in Santa, reindeer, and her list, all in one song. It is just so cute to watch. She is loving toward Mark and I and Daisy in a whole new way. It is just really cute. It is like the celebration of the season that Mark and I take to the extreme has really been passed on to her. 

Sure one day, she might choose to take a different path. I now practice a different religion than that which I grew up in (Catholicism), and I sure do a lot of things differently than my parents did. But right now, it is really fun having a mini-me (or mini-us, giving Mark some credit). It is a great Christmas so far, and to think, we are only half-way through Advent!!