It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

 

The house is decorated, the snow has fallen and the Christmas music is playing……need more?

We have always had the biggest fresh Christmas tree we could physically put into our home without scratching the ceiling and decorate it with over a thousand little lights and hundreds of ornaments! The whole day is devoted to this event; from picking it, strapping it to the roof and getting it into the house it has always been an adventure in itself. Even Rylie was looking for the James Family Christmas tree this year; she spotted a 25’ spruce that she decided would be the perfect tree. We told her that it was too big and couldn’t fit in our house (then I heard a voice in my head that said “it’s not going in our yard, Russ, its going in our living room” and then I took a quick moment to consider the possibility). In the rush and craziness of packing, Christmas was a second thought but we managed to pack a tree that we purchased for the girls’ room during the holiday time (after they kept stealing and decorating the trimmings from the tree); this certainly was a change for our family to have the main tree be an artificial 3’ tree. Coming out of the box it really did look like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree; the tree is prelit and very scrawny with only a few limbs to unfold and “plump up”. However, once we decorated it with beads, ornaments and plugged it in, it took on the James Family look and feel and I think it started to look a bit more proud and grew at least another six inches. It’s a cute tree and it adds to the delight and realization we are in the middle of a new and amazing adventure, where things will not be “normal” for awhile. We watched White Christmas, drank cocoa and ate our traditional treats of fudge, Anna longs and Russian tea cakes (funny huh). By the end of the evening, we had completely forgotten that we were in a foreign land and even going to bed it seemed as if we were “home”. The Christmas magic had done its work and had come to rest in our home.