December?

I can hardly believe it is December, let alone the 16th day. Grandma Kate put together an advent calendar for Taylor and Alec. It is the very first thing Taylor does when she gets out of bed. She runs downstairs, opens her door for the day, hangs an ornament on her little tree and runs to wake Alec to show him his prize. 8 year olds are delightful! We have a sad tree. For some reason this year, when we put together our fake tree and plugged in the lights we did not experience success. Only one strand of lights worked!?! When we first got the tree I had meticulously lined each branch with lights and woven the cords so they were not apparent. So this year I yanked off every strand of lights, threw on the net lights, that are not on the bushes in the front yard this year. It was pretty fast. We also do not have ornaments or decorations up inside the house. Well, not really, anything that did not get put away properly last year is out. I couldn't muster up the energy to crawl in the storage and yank out all of the boxes and mess so we are doing the minimum. We are NOT Skipping Christmas like the Krank's, rather downsizing decorations. Yes, I am missing many of the favorites of the season but think how happy we'll be next year. One benefit of not putting many ornaments on the tree ... Alec took off every glass ornament (I think 6) and smashed them into little tiny pieces. I was in the shower and I think he possibly hit them off with the new bat his dad bought at the dollar store - it's really long. He and Pyper had a great time running and jumping. Amazing enough, no blood came with the fun. Those ornaments were 21 years old (from our first year married) so they were ready to be retired.