Decorating the Christmas Tree

We had fun decorating the tree together (although I’m a little bummed that some of our photos of the kids all sitting in front of the tree from that night accidentally got deleted. I just noticed that I didn’t even end up with one of Camden decorating the tree. Oh well). We decided this year to try something new: we put the presents under the tree before Christmas Eve night. We explained to the boys that if the presents got touched then they would be removed from under the tree, and none of them have even gone close to them, which is pretty amazing. (When Kolby and Lijah were the ages that Isaac and Courtland are now, the idea of putting gifts under the tree would have just been a joke). But the boys earned money this fall with a garage sale and raking leaves for the neighbors, so I took them each out individually shopping for their family gifts, which was really cute.
At one point I had helped Kolby pick out gifts for his brothers and dad, and a few minutes later he came up and told me not to look under things in the cart. But later I happened to see out of the corner of my eye that he was holding some really shiny gold high heeled shoes. I thought it was adorable and didn’t want to ruin his surprise (I would have even worn them to church once or twice just for him, if they had been my size), but I didn’t want him to be disappointed on Christmas if they didn’t fit me. So I just mentioned to him that shoes have to be certain sizes to fit people. He went around the corner of the aisle, then came back and asked me if I was a size six. I told him I was an 8 ½ or 9. He asked which shoes were the right size, and I showed him where they were, but I didn’t see what he ended up with, so that should be a fun surprise. What a sweet kid!
And this is the first time that we are totally done with all the Christmas prep so far in advance (I always do stuff early, but it seems like we think of last minute things or always have some wrapping to do the night before). So everything is sent off to the relatives, and the boys’s gifts are taken care of. The thing I am looking forward to the most on Christmas morning is seeing is seeing how excited they will be to give their gifts to each other.