Christmas traditions {tree trimming and charlie brown}

If you have been reading 3 peanuts for a while, you know we have all sorts of hokey little holiday traditions.  You also know that I painstakingly document them all here.

So,Will was not here when we up our big tree (he was happy to be elsewhere).  Harry loves putting up the big tree with me and he s good at it too.  We used to have a fresh tree every year and I have photos of us going to the same place and the same young woman from NC helping us.  But Will and Dave used to get  a cold that lasted the whole month of December and usually culminated in a Christmas week sickness.  One year, it dawned on me that they might be allergic to the tree.  So, now we use an artificial tree but the December allergies have disappeared.

We bought the "Love" ornament on our 15th wedding anniversary weekend away.  Crystal is the anniversary gift for 15.  This is glass but it was the best we could find on the trip:)  We always get an ornament everywhere we go.  Do you?  Our tree is like a scrapbook of our lives.

Look at this old picture I found of Kate decorating the tree the first year she was home from China.  I just love it!!!

Then just this weekend, we put up the kids tree in the upstairs hallway.  They each have a small tabletop tree in their rooms too.  But this tree has a lot of the homemade and really little kid ornaments (Barney and Sesame Street etc).  They do this one on their own. Will enjoyed helping with that one.

Yes, Kate does walk around the house wearing a crown sometimes.

Finally, after a long weekend, we all snuggled on the couch tonight to watch  A Charlie Brown Christmas.  This is another of our traditions.  In fact, I blogged about it here (look how small Kate was) and the boys got Charlie Brown nutcrackers last year as their annual nutcracker.

Some of our best friends are visiting form Canada today and stayed with us last night.  We always have so much fun with them.  And tonight we are going to another family friend's house for game night.  I am glad to be enjoying the Christmas season with family and friends.