Christmas Season 2016 - Part 1

November was a pretty rough month for me, and though December wasn't perfect, I did feel like I was improving slowly but surely. Despite not being 100%, we actually got a lot accomplished in December. So, here it goes...

The Tuesday of the week of Thanksgiving, I took Briana to a pottery painting place to paint a new mug for Doug for Christmas. This has become a tradition of ours. She did an amazing job on his new mug...

She wanted it to say "Grill" and have flames on it because Doug loves to grill so much...

I started the Christmas decorating process in my master bedroom. Bri and I got the tree decorated and Mei Mei did absolutely nothing to help... :)

She did enjoy sleeping near it though...

The weekend of Thanksgiving, we went to pick out our real Christmas tree that goes in our living room. There were slim pickings at Pike's and it took forever to agree on a tree. This was the tree we originally picked out...

Because of the drought, the above tree split up the trunk when it was being removed from the stake (it had happened to a few trees we were told). The customer service person that was selling it to us said the tree couldn't take up water with a split trunk. I'm actually grateful she was honest with us. But, we had to turn right around and go back to the tree section and look again. Ugh. We had to take home a different tree.

Here it is...

It ended up being really beautiful and I was very happy with it.

It needed a bunch of trimming when we got it home though. It was the tallest tree we had ever purchased - 8 feet - and the widest too. The point of it actually touched the ceiling when we stood it up (until I trimmed the point down a bit). It felt like the Christmas tree scene from "Christmas Vacation"...

But in the end, it was really pretty...

I have to admit, I really love my house at Christmastime...

Then Bri and I got busy decorating our China-themed tree...

And Doug did an amazing job with the lights and decorations outside of the house...

Doug bought a new Lego train to add to our village and Bri put it together...

She also decorated a gingerbread house...

She wrapped herself up like a burrito one day...

And of course, Red the Elf made his appearance once again.

These are his hello and goodbye letters...

A few of the places he hid in the house...

I received so many beautiful Christmas cards...

My Christmas cactus bloomed - right on schedule...

And, I actually managed to send out Christmas cards myself (wasn't sure I'd get to it)...

So that was the gift making, decorating and visiting elf portion of the Christmas season. Christmas season 2016 - part 2 is coming up next...