It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

But it certainly doesn't feel like Christmas as far as the weather. It has been in the 50s for several days now.
Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving we go to the Christmas Dove and the girls each pick out an ornament for the tree and we add a piece to our nativity set. Dom and I had a little bit of a hard time getting into the spirit this year because it was close to sixty degrees outside, but the girls were as excited as ever and it is always fun to check out all the Christmas decorations.
They have a really cool chair that looks just like Santa and each girls took a turn sitting in it so mom could get a picture. This is as close as we get to actually sitting on Santa's lap. Neither girl has any interest in sitting in the lap of the mall Santa. I ask every year and every year they say no and that is as far as it goes. I gave up trying to coax and bribe years ago. It wasn't worth the hassle for a crappy polaroid picture.
Upon returning home we got out our Christmas decorations and put up everything but the tree.
This year we had major lighting issues. We do lots of lights inside and out. On the mantle, I light up the nativity set, around windows etc. This year we had several sets that either didn't work at all or only partially worked. We had one set where the two ends were lit up but about 8 inches in the middle wasn't lit up. How does that happen?? After several failed attempts to find that one annoying little bulb causing all the problems we decided to buy some more lights. We also have one of those wire reindeer with the lights on it and the head moves back and forth well within a week of having it last year the lights started to go out. and within two weeks we had what looked like a headless reindeer. We decided to tear off all the lights and put on new ones ourselves. How hard could it be? Harder than I want to admit. Dom kept saying it should be easy for me I'm creative and I kept insisting it should be easy for him he's an engineer. We finally got it look acceptable. We bought the really bright LED lights. Our deer now looks like it grew up in the woods near a nuclear power plant. I love it!
The evening was capped off with a viewing of Frosty the Snowman and A Year Without a Santa Clause. I love Heat miser and Freeze miser. In fact I love most all of the classic kids Christmas shows.

On Saturday we made a trip to the Christmas tree lot just up the road to cut down our tree. They have cute little names for the rows. We got our tree on Frostys Freeway. There's an old cemetary with a sign that says Cemetary of Christmas Past. And a big hill called Burgermeister Hill which is fun to sled down when there is snow on the ground. (Just ask Auntie Lisa.) This sort of helped us get in the spirit with no snow but we made the best of it. We trudged way to the back of the lot (and through the mud) and found a cute little tree we all liked. We brought it back home and got out the ornaments and the Christmas music and had fun 'Rockin around the Christmas tree.' And of course our tree wouldn't be complete without the train around the bottom.
The evening ended with a viewing of the Polar Express. Another great movie.