Christmas Decorations

I may have mentioned once or twice that Christmas is my very most favorite holiday (hence the countdown).  I love everything about Christmas.  I love the decorations, the music, Christmas shopping (even when the malls are ridiculously busy or Wal-Mart only has 5 out of a possible 25 cashiers working for some unknown reason), wrapping presents, giving presents, opening presents, the food, being with friends and family ... pretty much just everything that goes along with Christmas.  There is actually one thing I don't like about Christmas though: the weather.  Living on the prairies in Canada means that generally Christmas is accompanied by snow and cold (although we do get lucky occasionally here in Southern Alberta and have a Chinook for Christmas.  But then it's ugly since the grass is all brown and the 10 - 15 degree Celcius temperatures are accompanied by 70 - 90 kph winds that not only wreak havoc on one's hairdo but also sandblast everything with the sand that's been used on the icy roads.)  I firmly believe that we should get snow on December 23rd and it should melt on December 26th.  Oh I know we need the moisture for the farmers, blah, blah, blah ... but that doesn't mean that I have to like snow and -20 degree Celcius weather!  (I think I might live in the wrong part of the country/world since the temperatures fluctuate from -30 in the winter to +30 in the summer and I hate both extremes).

Anyways, that's enough ranting.  Let's get back to the love.  I was able to convince Jay to let me/help me decorate the house for Christmas yesterday.  He's usually quite adamant that we don't decorate or listen to Christmas music until December 1st, but I used the "it's the last weekend before I go back to work and it'll cheer me up" excuse along with my Bambi eyes to convince him.  Once I got him excited about decorating, there was no stopping him (yes, my darling husband will go with me to stores such as Persnikety to buy Christmas decorations (for those of you who don't know what it is, Persnikity is what I call a "Mom Store" because it's full of trinkets and things that Mom's like to decorate their houses with).  So we dragged the tree and all the decorations up from the crawl space shortly after noon and commenced to begin celebrating my favorite season.  Paxton decided he was not going to cooperate in any way shape or form and woke up from his nap about 5 minutes after we started decorating.  I was particularly happy about this since he's in the middle of another cold right now (thank you germy daycare kids) and was still tired as evidenced by the fact that he was trying to rub his eyes out of their sockets.  So I (unsuccessfully) tried to get Paxton back to sleep for an hour, finally gave up and then put him in his playpen with some toys so I could help Jay decorate.  To his credit, Paxton behaved himself quite well in the playpen and wasn't super whiney.

Unfortunately we had to take a break in our cleaning/decorating after a few hours since we were going to Jay's Dad's house for dinner.  We had Chinese food which was pretty good, but I was kind of disturbed by the lack of reaction from Jay's relatives when I discovered that the shrimp hadn't been de-veined (and I did explain to them what that meant).  Gross.  Anyways, we got home around 9:30 pm and I managed to get Paxton into bed on the first try (yay me!).  After a small discussion we decided that we should probably finish decorating since we had all the stuff out already and we don't trust our dogs 100% to not destroy everything if the mood strikes them.   Long story short: I went to bed around 1:30 am and apparently Jay came to bed around 3:30 am.  Paxton didn't respect our dedication to Christmas decorating since he woke up around 5:30 am and then wanted to be up for the day at 7 am.  Not cool.  But we did get everything done last night so now we get to enjoy our lovely decorations for the next month and a half.  And of course I took some pictures to share with everyone (see I promised the next post would be full of fluff and pictures!).

Paxton was pretty excited about the "new" stuffed animals (they're from last Christmas) 

Christmas Tree on the coffee table so Paxton (aka Mr. Grabby Hands) can't reach it 

Sign from Grammie and super cute hanging guys from Auntie Mandy (they also had to find a new home this year because of Paxton) 

My assortment of snowmen 

My Christmas Bear (still smiling even after her incident with Mo a few years ago) 

Jay's Christmas Bear 

Our stockings that Grammie made for us 

My Mom maintains that I picked out all the stuff that's on here.  I deny this, however, because there's a cat on the toe.  I really don't like cats so I highly doubt that.  Granted, I was a tennager then and probably brain-damaged so anything's possible. (love you Mom!) 

The Christmas rock garden 

Snowflake lights 

Jay's stocking from when he was little 

Super awesome Christmas balls.  They are super awesome because I had to lean over the banister into nothingness to hang them (and we have 3 pictures like this so I got to defy death multiple times) 

Icicles and snowflakes on the lights (these also had to find a new home this year) 

This is why Jay was up so much later than me 

Nativity and blocks (the blocks were also made by Grammie) 

"Angels" blocks also made by Grammie 

My favorite sign 

It's even Christmas in the bathroom! 

Also made by Grammie 

Mini Christmas tree made by Jay's Mom.  I haven't figured out where to put it yet ...

Hope you're in the Christmas mood now!  There will be more Christmas posts to come!