It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yes, it is.  We are slowly getting the house and ourselves ready for Christmas.  Last weekend we got out all of the decorations and put up some of the displays around the house. 

My sister and I bought matching ornaments at the Craft Festival.  I wonder if her's is hanging up yet?

I haven't quite got around to putting names on our stockings yet...

I've convinced Chris to build me a creche for my Nativity scene instead of paying $100 like the one that matches this set is going for!  Yay to a woodworking husband!

The kids and I have done Christmas crafts and read Christmas books each day. 

These are our decoupaged and yarn trees we make each year.  One day we'll have a whole forest full.

This guy is still waiting on his fabric rosettes, but I think he came out cute.

We get a new Chistmas book each year to add to our collection!

We posed the kids and took Christmas card photos on 2 afternoons since I forgot to adjust for the lighting the first day and although I got some great expressions, they were all too dark to see!  When my cards come in I'll show them to you, and some of the outtakes...How hard can it be to just sit and smile?  Apparantly too hard for my big cheesers!

Emma performed in her school Christmas concert for first grade. 

Emma and some of her besties.

They all look so serious, don't they?  Apparantly performing a serious task!

 We've had the radio in the car on the station that plays Christmas music all day long since Thanksgiving.  I think Chris is secretly glad he hardly ever rides with us! 

I've traced and am ready to cut out 16 sets of paper-pieced elves for Emma's class to put together on Monday.  Their teacher will take a picture of each of them and we'll use that for their elf's face.  How cute!  I also set up the Santa Shop at school on Friday with some of the other PTO Moms for the kids to shop next week.  And I'll be working in it all day for 2 days next week! 

But what is missing from all of this????  Can you look through the pictures and see what I haven't mentioned or shown?  It should be pretty obvious, or it was to me and the kids....Yep, that's it...no tree!  No tree!  I have 2 boxes of ornaments and lights sitting by where the tree WILL go waiting for it, but we haven't gotten one yet.  You could say we've just been too busy or that we're waiting so it makes it through Christmas, but really it's because we just haven't gone to pick one out yet.  A few nights ago Chris said "Oh, I hadn't thought about it, but we don't have a tree yet!"  I bit my tongue, but Emma in all of her 6-year-old innocence said "FINALLY!!  WE'VE BEEN WAITING!!!!" 

So, yesterday was the day.  We'd be lazy all morning and then head over to Chris' aunt and uncle's house.  They were having a bbq and invited us over and we'd go from there to the Christmas parade in town and pick up a tree on the way home.  But after 10 minutes at their house Emma broke out in welts and was itching so bad I had to bring her home (we live about 5 minutes away) to dose her up with a benadryl and lotion.  For those non-family members who are reading, Emma suffers badly from eczema and I usually carry lotion with me everywhere, but didnt' have any on me.  I didn't want to cause a scene at the party so I just brought her home since it was so close.  We got here and I looked at her and how her arms, legs neck, and face were swelling up and she had already scratched to the point of bleeding and knew this wasn't an eczema attack, but some kind of allergic reaction that was just compounded by her eczema.  I told her we wouldn't stay long, but let's go back and try to eat and we'll come on home.  Well by the time we got back and sat down to inhale our food, I looked over at Oren and his eyes were swollen and completely red and all around his mouth was broken out in welts.  WHAT????  Then he leaned back on me to rub his face and tipped my plate of food over on him!  So now he was red-faced and swollen and covered in BBQ suace and eggplant casserole!  Needless to say, we quickly departed, headed home and soaked these 2 sweet kiddos in a cool bath and forgot all about the parade and tree.

And so, for one more day at least, this family is all ready for Christmas with no Christmas tree.  Maybe tomorrow...  For now, I'm off to make sugar cookies with my two sweet sugars who are miraculously healed and now just itching for some Christmas cookies.