Cuties by the Christmas Tree

We celebrated Christmas with my family on Sunday (since we’ll be traveling on Christmas day). As soon as my family started bringing presents in the house, Mallory was BEGGING to open them…and then her cousins started in on the begging too. The mean parents made them all wait until we had some snacks first and then they went to town. Oh, I was the mean mom & aunt that also made them pose in front of the tree with all the presents before we let them open any.

I love how excited the girls are to have their baby brothers on their laps.

And here is our tree, all decorated and lit up. You’ll notice there are two bands of un-lit parts on the tree. The bottom unlit part is the result of a strand of lights that is out on our less-than-a-month-old pre-lit fake tree. I don’t know why there is another band of unlit tree (I think that is where the top and middle sections join us, so I think next year I should be able to adjust some branches there to make it blend together better…if we end up keeping this tree). I didn’t notice it until I really looked at the tree in the dark the other night – in real life it isn’t this obvious. It feels shady to return the tree after Christmas, but I wasn’t going to undecorate it and return it before Christmas, and I don’t think I have the patience to try to test every bulb that is out on that strand of lights. We’ll see what happens.

All that said, our tree looks a tiny bit ghetto, but I still think it looks beautiful. We have all the presents packed up so we can open them Christmas morning in our hotel room in Florida. I bought a little 2’ tree and some ornaments so we can make our room there look festive-y. I’ll post pictures of that from cold sunny Florida!