Christmas

I love to decorate for Christmas. This is a picture of the tree we display in our living room. My husband patiently hangs the icicle lights around the crown molding from the ceiling. In this photo you can see the lights hanging down. The walls are painted red leather and the trim is the aging technique both are Ralph Lauren techniques. It was painfully time consuming to do but the results were definitely worth it. My living room and dining room have white furniture with red and white toile. Christmas decorations really look good and I have fun decorating.

This picture is from our dining room and picks up the icicle lights a little better. The Santa hats on the dining room chairs I bought at Michael's and tea stained to get the aged look. My stepfather told me I am the only person that he knows that bought a new house and made it look old on the inside. I got quite a chuckle out of that because I love the old vintage look. Especially old furniture that needs to meet a can of white paint.

Christmas Eve we always go to church for the Christmas Eve Service, eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant and the boys are allowed to open one gift. Needless to say the one gift they get to open are the Pajamas they are to promptly put on and wear to open their gifts the next day. Amazingly, all three boys still believe in Santa (wink-wink....maybe it had something to do with the threat "If you ruin it for Lance there will be nothing for the two of you.")

The next morning all three arrived with their Christmas

pajamas on. We separate out the gifts and each person has their pile. We start with the youngest opening all their gifts. Lance had met Santa when we were in Kingsport and told him he wanted a pocket rocket. Once we got home he was upset because he didn't give him his list and he was worried Santa wouldn't bring the pocket rocket because he was too little to ride it. He was afraid he would have nothing under the tree at all due to not properly delivering his list to Santa.

I promptly informed him, I made a copy and mailed it to Santa for him. He was definitely relieved when he realized that Santa did get his list and brought him the Didj he had put on the list along with the appropriate games. All was well with the world once this package was opened.

Once Lance finished it was John's turn to open up his gifts. We try really hard to help Santa get what they put on their list. Fortunately, he didn't have a really long list. We were able to get him what he asked for. He seemed pleased. But John is always happy with whatever...he never is disappointed. He is definitely our easy middle child.

Then on to William our oldest. He wasn't really expecting much we paid for repairs his car needed. So I think he was pleasantly surprised Santa brought him some extras he was not expecting. This is a rare smile that I was actually able to catch only thing was he would not look at the camera. For such a big guy he sure is shy.

I also was able to take pictures of John and Lance with their stockings.

William wasn't as cooperative...he didn't want to get up to go get his stocking.