Tree Trimming

One of the things I love about Christmas is seeing the wonder and excitement in little kids. Last Friday, after our mad morning of shopping, I set out to put up the Christmas decor. My 5 year old nephew was all too happy to help so we started with the trees. First, he helped me check lights and we discussed ways to make the tree even "wonderfuler" and "beautifuler" and we talked about why they don't make brown Christmas lights (Joshie's favorite color!). He's glad they at least make orange (his other favorite color) and maybe he'll put a string of all orange lights in his room. (His mom doesn't think they own a string of all orange lights...)

Let's start with the tree on the patio. This is our "Scandinavian Tree" and it has several matching ornaments (thus the theme). Joshie was happy about that and as he started hanging them up he said "OH! Another snowflake. I'll put that right by this one."  I should mention here that Joshie has been a liner-upper his whole life. He puts everything into nice, neat little lines - M&Ms, cars, pumpkins, anything. So pretty soon I looked over at the tree and realized there was a line forming:

Next we went to the living room and did the silver tree. Another theme tree which means more matching of like-ornaments:

Last we started on the family tree. (Yes, we do have 3 trees. Yes, I'm a little crazy. No, I won't come decorate your house. No, mom likely won't put up even 2 of them after I leave.) As we were decorating this tree Joshie shared some of his logic with me. I told him to be very careful with the glass ornaments because they can break easily. He said, "Yeah, so we have to put them down low [this is where I paused and listened closer] so they won't break if they fall." Oh! Ok, really, not bad logic. Not quite the way I think of it but I can see where he's coming from. 

Then Tiernan, who's 3, woke up from his nap and needed to help too. Both of the boys were oooing- and aahing at all the ornaments they unwrapped, it was great. Tiernan replaces many letters with "w" and he was just cracking me up. "Dis one is not wastic [plastic]. Dis one is wass [glass], I will hang it on the wanch [branch]." But, the show stopper was when someone handed him a nutcracker to hang up. "Oh, dis nutwhacker is not wass!" Oh my. That was a good laugh. I've never met a kid who has such a knack for saying things the most inappropriate of ways so innocently! 

My two little decorating buddies:

It was also so funny to look at the tree when they were done because they both chose a spot and stuck to it, putting pretty much all their ornaments on just a couple branches.  This is Joshie's branch - it was so loaded down that it was touching the floor. We did move some of the ornaments after boys left so that we wouldn't step on them...