Decorating the tree

This year putting the tree up was quite an experience. We always try to get it up the weekend after Thanksgiving - when we aren't out of town that is. This year when we pulled the tree out of the box and put it together we realized that we were missing a piece that connects the top of the tree to the rest of it. I had just spent the last while cleaning out the basement and figured that I had thrown it away. So - since the trash man hadn't come yet, I went through a trash bag that I knew it had to be in. After searching through the trash for a while I gave up and figured that I would check somewhere else - sure enough, it was in one of the Christmas decoration tubs.

After we finished putting the tree together we found out that over half the lights on the tree didn't work. We ended up going light bulb by light bulb to figure out which ones were burnt out. We ended up replacing over 60 light bulbs and finally got all of the tree lit up.
After it took us so long to get the tree together and lit, we were finally able to decorate it. This is one of my favorite things to do at the beginning of the Christmas season. We all love getting out the ornaments and remember which new ones we got from the year before. The kids each put one their own ornaments and then we do all the family ones together. Here are a few pictures from the night.

Makayla is showing off her ornament she got from finding the pickle ornament first last year. We hide a pickle ornament and then the kid that finds it first on Christmas morning gets a special ornament. We didn't get any pictures of the tree fully decorated. I'm sure there will be more later.