fa-la-la, la-la-la, blah blah blah.

Well, it seems the Christmas Spirit has alighted on yours truly and things are finally getting into the swing of Advent!  It's about time, now that Advent is nearly half over.  (HOW.)

On Saturday night, we loaded the kids up into the Kraken and headed to Lowes to pick out our tree!  I know it's silly, but I spend time in prayer every year before this trip.  I want to find a good tree, and if we end up with a not good tree, I don't want to act like a baby like I did that one year that we ended up with Little Billy, Jr., the world's tiniest Christmas tree.  (It seems like picking out a tree shouldn't be such a gamble, but it's often hard to see a tree's full character when it's cold out and all the branches are huddled tight against the trunk.  Once you get it inside and it relaxes a bit, it often looks at least a little different than what you were expecting.  So I get nervous.)

We perused the aisles at Lowes for a bit, and landed on a tree we all seemed to like, and that seemed like it would fit in our family room.  This year, I decided to try putting the tree in our basement family room, since our main floor living room is already pretty tight quarters and in years past, the tree has really obstructed the main pathway from the front door.  But the ceiling down there is lower than upstairs, so I needed to make sure I was judging the height of the tree accurately.

Todd Conquers Tree.

Van Voorsts Ogle Awkward Tree-Cutting Employee.

Once we had committed to our family room tree, I also found a little mini tree for our living room.  I fully recognize the irony of purchasing a tiny tree on purpose after holding a grudge against Little Billy, Jr. for all these years.  You don't have to rub my nose in it.

You know what I just love about the Kraken (besides everything)?  The fact that we can fit a seven-foot tall Christmas tree right in the trunk.

When we got home, I got it all situated in the stand in the basement, and while Todd and the big kids were at church yesterday morning, I got the lights on it.  (I stayed home with the littlest kids to keep working with Callista on potty training.)  After lunch, we put on Christmas music and hung ornaments.

Ornament hanging always produces a flurry of activity.

I keep things as simple as possible by keeping each kid's ornaments in separate boxes, and setting up camp on the couch, where they can bring their ornaments for hooks.

This was Rocco's first year of full-on participation!

Rocco loved getting to hang his ornaments on his own, and though the broken arm kind of slowed him down a bit, it couldn't steal his cheerfulness.

Pepper, on the other hand... well, all kinds of things were stealing her cheerfulness, not least among which was the duty of being awake.

Ohp, I guess I spoke too soon.  Something was able to steal Rocco's cheerfulness, but it was not exactly clear to anyone besides Rocco what the problem was.  Being a preschooler is hard.

But I am cheerful at the moment, because the tree is up and decorated, and the Christmas season seems to have fully launched.  I would like to get our mini tree decorated - I had the idea to put all of Todd's and my ornaments on that one, but seeing as how most of our ornaments are of the ridiculous or breakable sort, I'm not sure putting them all right at Pepper-Level is the best idea.  If I haven't learned that much after eleven years of parenting crawling-babies-around-Christmas-trees, what have I learned, really?

Anyway.  Onward and upward into Advent, friends!

Little Billy, Jr. graced our presence in 2013.  It appears we don't have a stump ring for him, but that's only because the ring is so tiny it's hidden between 2012 and 2014.