It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas - Part 1

Last year was the first time I have ever gotten a flocked tree, and we loved it so much, especially the contrast it gives our bright ornaments, that it will probably be the only type we get from here on out.

Earlier this week we chose the tree that will be staying in our house for the next month:

We only do live trees. I love the smell!!

...and my dad used to say when we were kids "it's not a REAL Christmas, unless you have a REAL Christmas tree." He threatened my mom to put "fake" presents under our "fake" tree if she ever bought one, so under NO circumstance can I have a fake tree in my house. We will just suck it up and deal with finding needles 7 months from now in our carpet! :)

Carson also wanted to pose (well, more like dance)by the "Baby-Deacon-tree." (No, he didn't talk us into buying this one)

We were so exhausted by the time we got home and drug all the stuff out of the attic, we decided to wait until the next night to do the decorating.

When I get all of the ornaments out of the box, I like to group them into their categories to see what we are working with. This pictures doesn't make it look like a lot, but it took us like 30 minutes to get them all on.

Carson was a big help, he really focused on "centralizing" the ornaments.

I LOVE how our tree turned out!

I realized while hanging them, that our favorite ornaments all revolve around Carson...

I bought this one in New Orleans a couple of months after I found out I was pregnant with him:

His school made us this one last Christmas:

Brian's parents gave Carson this one for his 2nd birthday, when he had his baseball birthday party:

...and my VERY favorite, Carson painted this at his 1st birthday party (Winter Wonderland):

We still don't have the house completely decorated, but I did get the fireplace decorated, so at least we have the two major decorative Christmas staples: tree & stockings.