Decorating the Christmas Tree!!!

This year we decorated our tree the earliest we have ever done it.  We did it on Thanksgiving day.  The kids had a half day of school and David had to work the whole day so we didn't have a big Thanksgiving dinner on the actual day.  I thought it would be fun to decorate a tree. I went to Metro (like a Costco) a few days before and picked out an artificial tree that wasn't too expensive but didn't look like a "Charlie Brown" tree.  

We put it up and David put on the lights while we strung popcorn for our garland.  Our Ayi wanted to help us string the popcorn so she sat down with us and did it.  She was very fast and we are grateful for her help or we wouldn't have as much on our tree as we do.

 The kids all had a fun time putting the popcorn through the needle and pulling it down on the thread.  Unfortunately they forgot to hold the thread by the needle and unthreaded it several times.  We also made candy canes out of red and white beads and 2 pieces of pipe cleaner wrapped around each other.  I bought a few ornaments also to put on the tree.

 We had a great time decorating the tree while watching our favorite church Christmas movies--"Mr. Krueger's Christmas" and "Nora's Christmas Gift".

Meagan was happy that the tree wasn't too tall because she got to put the star on the top of the tree! Living in China has helped us to remember we don't need to have a lot of things to have a fun holiday season.  The kids colored pictures and then cut them out and pasted them on colored paper and hung them all over the walls.  Heidi pasted together several sheets of green paper and cut out the shape of a giant Christmas tree and then colored and cut out paper to make lots of fun ornaments to put on her paper tree.  She even put white snow on the branches.  It looks great! (Look in the background of the picture of the kids stringing popcorn and you can see the bottom half of the tree Heidi made)  Eric was playing with his Polar Express train that he got last year and the girls asked if we could put that under the tree to go around it just like we have in America.

Eric loved the idea and so now his train is around the Christmas tree.  I was able to find chocolate advent calendars here and the kids love getting their new chocolate every morning, in fact it has been a great motivator to get them up and dressed for school before they can eat it.  Hope your holiday preparations are going well also!!!!