Christmas Tree

This week we goto out the Christmas tree. Yes we have an artificial one - we caved and started going fake our first Christmas with Ally - 3 cats and a crawler just didn't seem to fit with with a real tree. Turns out we like the artificial kind just fine. Ally was so excited to decorate the tree this year. I think the main reason was her Woody & Jesse ornament she found from the Disney Store.

I wanted to get a picture of her with the ornament in front of the tree. It really was a happy moment, even if she looks stressed.

And kind of "weirded out" by the ornament. I wanted her to hold it up high so we could see the ornament.

So high it was and a big cheesy grin to go with it. Not exactly the perfectly posed picture I had hoped for - but calssic none-the-less.

Hanging the ornament on the tree.

Her prized ornament. yes it is pretty hideous - glittery and all Toy Story - but she loves it and I love her so of course its perfect, and every year we try and get an ornament that fits represents what Ally was "into" and this was definetely a Toy Story year.

After Woody and Jesse were hung up we got out the rest of our unbreakable ornaments. Ally was so excited to find out she had other "special ornaments" that were all hers. We bought some handmade ornaments from a fellow blogger a couple years ago - they are made of hupil scraps. (a hupil is a traditional Guatemalan cloth) She has a framed picture of her from her very first Christmas - before she was home with us, and the gorilla ornament Becky made her last year Ally took all of her "special oranaments" as she called them. She would say - "this is special to me" and take it in the dining room, when she had all of her special ones gathered she ran carrying each one, one by one run into the living and hang it on the tree.

It was pretty special to decorate the tree with her.

This week we also started listening to Christmas music - we started with Silent Night, we have a picture book that tells the story and a cd to go along with it - and talked about how Christmas was to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus. Then we got out our Nativity scene so Ally could see it in person. I'm looking forward to teaching her that Christmas is about more than Santa and Rudolph and the Bumble. It is a lot of fun to have Ally be old enough to really start to "get" Christmas!