Decking the Halls

After the Christkindlmarkt on Saturday afternoon,  we were in the Christmas mood.  It was high time to trim the tree and put the final touches on the house. I say final touches because I had started decorating about 2 weeks before (yes, before Thanksgiving).  I start early, especially when we move houses because I have no idea where things go and I will put them in one place, decide they don't belong there, move them to another spot and decide that isn't quite right either.  It takes awhile to get it right and even with two weeks of moving things around I am still not sure everything is right.  But I digress...we were talking about trimming that tree.

Sunday was the perfect afternoon.  The weather outside was frightful, but the fire was so delightful (thanks, Netflix for those tv fires), and since we had no place to go --- Nah, it didn't snow but we were surely in the mood.

The girls donned their hats as I put up the tree.  Once it was wrestled into place and the branches were spread out just so I gave each girl their bag of ornament and they sat down and unwrapped their very own collections.  We have added to their stash each year and it's so much fun to watch them open each ornament and ooh and aah and tell me their story about where they got it and who they got it from or when they made it.

Once their bags were empty we discussed a few strategies about placing the ornaments.  We have a cat that thinks the tree is her own personal playground.  And a dog that has a long, swishy tail that she wags a lot.  The consensus was that breakables and fragile ornaments would go up top and those that could withstand a beating could go down low.  Strategy in place I let them have at it.  And this year I truly let them decorate the tree by themselves.  Which means that every ornament was placed by their hands exactly where they wanted to place it.  And I fought my OCD tendencies to move things around to make it more pleasing to the eye.  It still makes my right eye twitch sometimes when I see no less than 8 red ornaments in 6 square inches of space but it makes me happy to know that the girls are really proud of their tree...and I couldn't touch an ornament if I wanted to because they would notice instantly.  Trust me.  The cat knocked one down, I replaced it and in the morning I heard all about how it was on the wrong branch.

I let them hang to their heart's content.  And they danced and they sang and they really thought about where each of their precious possessions should hang...

That tongue.  She is just like her Uncle C when she concentrates like that.

This was her Great Grandparents ornament and she was going to find the perfect spot!

They each looked at me exactly once and then went back to doing their thing which meant I got some great faces on camera...

And then this elf had enough and started playing peek-a-boo.

Finally, the girls had all of the ornaments placed.  All except the ones that are in my bag because, of course, I have a bag of personal memories too...

The ornament from the year B and I got married.

And that one time when we bought our first house...

The year we had our second baby's first christmas (MadHatter has one too but it wasn't camera ready)

The one we bought our first year as expats...A chile pepper for the year we moved to Chile...

And there are more - so many more - but I won't bore you with our trip down memory lane.  Just know that we had a great time walking down it ourselves.  And we are truly feeling the Christmas spirit here in Munich.