Christmas Home Tour

Christmas Home Tour of Alexandria.

Thought I'd give you a Christmas tour around our Griswold house. Actually I think we are the opposite of Griswold, cuz he goes overboard and I go way underboard. This year is especially pathetic because we are only in town in the Month of December about 1/2 the month between Aruba and being in TX this year for the holidays. But I supressed my lazy scrooge and on a 70degree day in Saturday we put up the tree and decorated. I normally decorate both living rooms and mantles, but we put it all in one room this year. So here is a tour of our tree and the random things around the house. The first picture below is Ritchey reading like a week's worth of advent storybook readings, since we were gone the first week of advent. I think the 3 of them lasted in that chair together a total of 5 whopping seconds.

Lets take a closer look at this sweet little tree. The year we went to a Frasier Fur, my favorite, we went smaller because they are more expensive, I love small little trees now, although this may be our smallest, standing a whopping 6 ft. This is also our most random tree, I describe it as a crap gun going off on it. But nobody is coming to visit us this year, I am not hosting a party this year, so we just let the kids go crazy, even helping with the lights and choosing whatever they wanted to put up. I didn't do ribbon, or coordinating bulbs and I tried hard not to rearrange what they put on, although I did just a couple times when I found 3 on one branch. I know someday when they strip my tree of all their ornaments for their own homes, I will have that oh so chic tree, so for now I love my toddler tree. Ok, Lets take a closer look and tour some of the time honored ornaments.

Aah, here is me in my brownie uniform when I was 10 I think. See Scouting does run in the family! Carrie I hope you still have yours.

Here is Ritchey in college. My crafty roomate Rachel made this of Ritchey at the time. He's in a bumper car in case you were wondering and wearing Revlon lipstick I believe. This is one of my favorite ornaments so I always put it in a prominent, gaping hole spot.

You think this is Sophie's don't you, nope, Ritchey's. He had a crush on Ariel, in elementary school actually thru college, at which point his parents bought him this ornament for him to admire on a daily basis. Ritchey did actually get to meet Ariel in Disneyland when his family visited (while they were college aged :). She was kinda scary though, very large busted, with very large seashells, so he kinda got over her and then met me :) But each year the boys make fun of daddy for liking a girl movie.

This is our newest ornament. We try to get an ornament from wherever we travel. We are sorta good about remembering to do that. This was a cute one because Santa is snorkeling, and so did we! I'm so intentional about my design like that.

Here is the bottom bough, which you can tell one of my midget children thought was a great spot for many ornaments.

Each one of my kids has an ornament from their first Christmas, this is sweet little Sophie.

Here is our first Christmas together ornament. Look at the love.

And finally, here is the best part of our craptastic kid tree, the handmade crafty ornaments from the kids. It is true that our tree is pretty random and a hodgepodge, but these really are the best part, although this one is actually rather large, therefore perfect for barespots, but still large for basically a piece of construction paper. But those angel wings are Parker's handprints. There are many more such ornaments on the tree. Ok, finally just a couple shots from around the house.

Another tacky but oh so cute handmade Christmas mobile. I think Cooper actualy made this. Which is great because Parker's crafts far out number Coopers.

The boy's private own little nativity outside their room. I can't believe we actually still have the baby Jesus on this one. It is the true Christmas miracle.

Here is the grown up nativity that I just love. I don't do the best job displaying it, but I still love it. This was one of those gifts Ritchey got me early on in our marriage, the first and last time he listened to all my hinting and figured out what I wanted for Christmas. What is missing is this ginormous camel that he added to it, it literally is 2x the size of Joseph, so we leave it out.

This sweet picture of Parker when he was Sophie's age,caught our eye last night after we came home from a party. We just stared at it, laughed and reminisced. We then went and kissed each kid as they were sleeping. 

And finally our paired down Christmas mantle. I just didn't have it in me to fill the vases, put out the candles, yada yada yada, but hey, all of this isn't so shabby for a 2 week December. I guess we're done having kids, there isn't room for more stockings :). Ok, well that is the only home on our tour this year, thanks for visiting, and come back next year when there will be a whole nother year worth of crafts on our tree.