Christmas, 2008

In preparation for our home sale, we loaded up 3 remote storage boxes, and sent them away. The idea was to fool the next owner into thinking adequate storage space existed. Apparently it worked, but unfortunately, Ed only saved our measly tree and one box of Christmas decorations from being shipped off. This meant that we had to make do with a lot fewer decorations than normal. There were probably only about 20 ornaments on the tree, and those were only there because they'd been sitting in my basement for about a year waiting for new photos to be put in them.

No matter. Connor had a ball decorating the tree, and was extra excited to get to climb the ladder and hang things higher. He explained that he needed to perform this little task to keep Helen from messing with them. Of course, Helen only messed with the ornaments when Connor handed them to her and then hollered "Mom, Helen is breaking an ornament", because uh, that is just an ornament's destiny when it reaches Helen's nimble fingers.

Amazingly, when I put a few presents under the tree for the kids, they actually left them alone. Helen, because she didn't care that much and Connor, because he does occasionally follow rules, and I told him very specifically "I'll put this present under the tree, but you may not open it until all the candy in your Advent calendar has been eaten." He did try and change the rules of the calendar a bit and speed up the process by eating more than one chocolate each day, but that movement was thwarted easily.

Hope everyone else had fun preparing for and then enjoying the holidays!

Elaine