Tree Decorating!

We decorated our tree Monday night and it was a lot of fun. We actually took pictures of the decorating this year because, well we have a blog to post them on! Yumiko got to help decorate the tree and we gave her her very own Christmas stocking to hang. We're looking forward to making cookies for Santa and doing our Christmas program at church and doing some shopping and gift wrapping. Going to Grandma's on Christmas Eve and enjoying spending time with family and cousins. What is frightening is the short amount of time I have to do all of this! Yikes!

One of the things I have done every year is create an ornament and put in it things that are significant to our family that year. I have done this since Rick and I were engaged and I put the rose he proposed to me in it (dried out, of course). I'll post some pictures below of some of the ones I've done. I haven't made this year's ornament yet, but when I do, I'll post it.

Yumiko, Caroline and Peter in front of the tree.

Yumiko got the honor of putting the angel on the tree. We call the angel "Dolly" because her sleeves are so puffy that when you look up at her, she looks like Dolly Parton (well, part of her anyway).

We got Yumiko her own stocking. She loved it.

This ornament is the one I made the year we were married. The coin in it is from Jamaica, where we honeymooned and the ribbon and velvet flowers are from my wedding bouquet, which had artificial flowers.

This is the ornament from Peter's first Christmas. The outfit he's wearing he wore at his baby dedication. I had that outfit for 2 solid years before he came home. Sniff!

This is Caroline's First Christmas ornament. There is a piece of jade hanging below the ribbon (can't see it) that was given to us by our guide when we adopted her. The diamondy ladybug just below her face was found by my niece in MN (thanks Abby!). Ladybugs are the unofficial mascot of adoption from China.

This is an ornament I made just because I liked the picture I copied it from :)

I'm still a bit behind on things and haven't even started Christmas cards. Sigh.