Deck the halls!

And you thought I'd forgotten to post pictures of the decorations! Okay, so I had, but I remembered...finally.

And here they are. (Fair warning: they're not stellar, but they pretty much get the point across.)


Standing inside our front door, looking through the doorways to our Christmas tree.


Looking from our family area into the dining area. The sole point of this picture is to show off our Texas-tribute pepper lights (which quit lighting up a couple of days ago :-( ).


And the tree itself. Decidedly not "Eat at Joe's," but definitely less perfectionistic than years past.


Our nativity collection: Palestine (top), Mexico (bottom left), and Honduras (bottom right) and two of the kids' stockings (temporary, until Mommy gives up and turns the whole project over to DeeDah [get ready, Mom, they're all yours now]).


The kids' tree. More on the Eat at Joe's end of the spectrum.


See, I let them have colored lights (and all the ornaments that belong to them, plus those that didn't quite "make" the family tree :-).


And, last but not least, our Advent calendar (see a previous post for the Advent wreath, too). This was given to us by ML's mom one Christmas when MS was a toddler, and it has been a fun part of our Christmas celebration ever since (okay, so hot-gluing all the pieces back to their velcro got a little old the first couple of years, but they're now permanently affixed). The kids take turns placing the day's figure. And the rule is that, whomever's day it is to place the figure gets to choose where to place it, no criticism or re-placing allowed (look again, and you'll see what I mean).