Of Christmas trees and cookie houses

I am of the school that thinks Thanksgiving doesn't get its due. Christmas music in October? Blasphemy.

 So it wasn't until the first week of December sometime that we got out the tree.

 The kids had a great time. Their favorite ornaments (also my favorite), the vintage-looking mercury glass figures, populated the lower third of the tree mostly. Clara would hold them delicately up to the tree and then let go. Then, whether or not the hook had managed to lodge itself on a branch, she would get another ornament to hang in exactly the same place. I don't think we got a picture, but at one point there were five tiny ornaments hanging on the same branch.

 The poinsettias were a little easier.

 This was taken before we got our Christmas train set up around it. Nathan knows Christmas trees need to have trains around them. We even made a special trip to our neighbor's house to see their Christmas train, and it was wonderful. So instead of bemoaning that his parents were too Grinchmas to buy him a neat Christmas train with lights and music and mechanized power, he set up his wooden train. Which I liked even better.

 And I guess a gingerbread house is becoming a tradition. Not a very pretty tradition, but the kids don't care. All they cared about was having extra candy to eat.