Brown and Pink Polka Dots : Oh Christmas Tree

I use to be a no Christmas tree until after Thanksgiving person... but now I decided I am an adult and we can do what is best for our family. Who cares if other people do not decorate until later because my Christmas celebrating is not dependent on other people.

So Saturday night we put up the tree as a family. It was probably the easiest year since having kids. The girls are at the perfect age where they loved to help and were still filled with awe and wonder for the whole process. They loved looking at all of the ornaments and talking about what they were from. After we finished up the tree we curled up and watch the Grinch together.

It is what we all needed. Since August Jilli has been hospitalized twice and in infusion clinic twice, Lydia was hospitalized once and an additional ER and 2 walk-in trips. Plus we have 6 therapy appointments every week, and 20 doctor appointments. Plus back in August Lydia ended up with a mystery rash that kept us in the house for a week as we didn't know if it was contagious. It has felt like one thing after another.

We have spent much of our year away from home between our second opinion, hospital stays (6 this yr between the 2 kids), and appointments we have spent a ton of time away... and had many times that we planned on being home spent away from home instead. Like we had a dumpster delivered a few weeks ago to work on cleaning out the garage and basement and then a couple days later Jilli was hospitalized. This year has felt like we needed to claim family time, because otherwise it was not just going to happen. So we decided that Saturday night was going to be family night and I am so thankful that we did. We were home and had time to do the tree at our pace. I felt a little nervous that if we didn't do it "early" that we might not get the tree up this year and after our year my heart just could not handle that.

But as much as putting up a tree with two young kids is a bit of organized chaos, I was pausing to look at the ornaments. The different ornaments mark different moments in our lives. They are a reminder of where we have been.

Like there is a breast cancer ornament from when I was in high school and there was concern for a while that I had breast cancer, and this year our tree is full of Barbie ornaments because when I was little my mom got me a Barbie ornament each year and this year the girls are in to Barbies so they wanted to put those up. There is a Ronald McDonald House ornament that reminds us of our other house and an ornament from the college we went to. There are a bunch of ornaments we didn't put up this year because we let the kids decorate 90% of the tree so most delicate ornaments stayed in the box this year, but even that there is beauty in too... this year the tree is more of the kids tree which is really special that they are old enough for them to make the tree their own.

This made me think of which ways we claim our days. I am not a "name it claim it" person, however I think there are times we need to claim time or it is going to get away from us. Often traditions help us to do that. One of the things I love about the Christmas season is we make a pile of all of our Christmas movies and books and we make a goal to see how many of them we can watch/read which causes us to be more intentional about family time this time of year. Just having the tree in the living room causes us to slow down a little.

Even with life being busy and crazy we can still do things that mark time and stay that things are important to us. We have found that out over the years... we can either wait for time to happen (hint, it never will) or we can make the best of the time we have. Like a few weeks ago we were supposed to have dinner with friends but Jilli was in the hospital so they brought the party to her hospital room and we played games and hung out with friends. We are thankful the people in our lives who understand that and roll with that with us.

The kids decided the Ken Barbie needed to go next to he RMH ornament so that Mr. Ken is near RMH

I get a Starbucks cup ornament each year... it started as a joke but became a tradition

Just a small amount of the Barbie on our tree

We always have the nativity on the tree to remind us what this tree is really about

This ornament was a gift from a family friend one Christmas after we went to their house for my birthday when I was 16 and we had a lot of outside campfires while eating yummy chocolate, this reminds me of that time every year.

Jillian's first Christmas

Jaime bought me this the year I was pregnant with Lydia. She gave it to me at her baby shower when she was pregnant with Emerson. She gave it to me in the hall because we had not told most people yet that I was pregnant.

When I was in 4th grade we learned about holidays around the world. One of the things we learned about was St. Nicks so that year we put out our boots and in my boot was this ornament. It has been well loved over the years and has been glued many times.

There is a mouse in our tree! Lol! When I was younger we were up north and we were taking apart a wooden box that was outside which we were guessing had mice in it. I walked up behind my grandfather to ask him a question and tapped him on the shoulder which he thought was a mouse on his shoulder... he jumped lol. Since then mice have become a joke between us about nice and we hide stuffed mice in each others homes and have nice on our Christmas trees.

Figment! Jilli loves Figment and when we went to Disney at Christmas time Jilli did a scavenger hunt in Epcot and her prize was a Figment ornament that she loves