Getting Our Christmas On

I am slowly getting it together over here.
Decorations--check.
Shopping--nearly done.
Christmas cards more than half addressed--will be mailed on Monday. I promise.

However, not a single gift is wrapped.
No baking done-- what so ever-- but I might make some cookies tomorrow. I'll post the recipe if I do. They are really good: white chocolate, oatmeal, pecans and dried crasain cookies.

But nevertheless we got our Christmas on. The lights and outside decorations went up last weekend and we decorated our tree. Christmas has thrown up all over our house.
And the kids are loving it.

Our neighbor had put his lights up the weekend before. He had just put some on his house. But then we put up our lights and I noticed on Wednesday that he had added a giant snowman and some lights on the trees in front of his house.
Does this mean we are suppose to put more lights up? Get another obnoxious inflatable?

I think we are still winning because we have lights in the back too. Neighbor doesn't so that must mean we are excelling at the whoever-has-the-highest-electric-bill-in-January-wins contest.
You see, our house is decorated in the Christmas mullet fashion:

We are all Christmas in the front.


And party in the back.

Classy, I know.

Carmella has her pink tree up:

Beau keeps asking for his Blue tree. He doesn't have a blue tree. Santa brought Carmella her Pink tree the year she was almost 3. So I guess that means Santa better be bringing Beau a Blue tree.
Does anyone know where I can buy a Blue tree?

Beau had a Christmas program and sang "Mary Had a Baby Boy". In his performance they mime wrapping a baby in swaddling clothes. Beau pretty much swaddled for the whole song. That is when he wasn't pointing out to his friends his Mommy and their Mommy.
And then he did a performance at home of Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer. However, around here we change around who has the red nose--sometimes it is Carmella the red nosed kindergartner, or Mommy the red nosed runner or maybe Beau the red nosed preschooler. Both kids get mad when they are the red nosed one of the song so most of the time I am the red nosed one. This tells me that while kids like the idea of Rudolf they still know he is a freak. I see how it is. They all say they love Rudolf and he'll go down in history and is the hero of Christmas and all that but really no one wants to be him. No one wants a red nose. It is totally freaky. Even to the 3 and 5 year olds who should probably think a red nose that lights up like a light bulb is pretty cool. But no. It is still freakish.
Makes for cute school projects though.
Finally, the kids helped out a lot in the decorating the tree this year. The tree has never looked so bad.
It is a mess.
But that is okay. I did have to move some ornaments around because we definitely don't agree in how a tree should be decorated nor do they have any understanding about the complicated science of ornament placement. It quickly came apparent to me that lumping ornaments together on the lowest branches in a straight line is the height of Christmas "decatating" among the playground set.
Hope everyone else that does the jingle jig is getting their Christmas on too.