O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum! Du kannst mir sehr gefallen!

Growing up, Christmas wasn't a very big deal at my house. We'd celebrate it but most of the time we did it early, because half of us would go to Japan and spend Christmas break there. Although, as I'm older, I think it's helped me to better appreciate why we celebrate Christmas (to celebrate our Savior's birth) then only thinking of what I'm getting for Christmas.

One thing we always did do together, was put up our Christmas tree. So maybe because that's more of a fonder memory of my family Christmases I now LOVE Christmas trees. This year we got a tree for everyone. (We also only spent $10 on our big trees and had a ton of ornaments so it really wasn't that crazy to do)

This is Chloe's first Christmas Tree.

It's Elijah's from last year, it's a bit on the Charlie Brown side, but they both love it in their room. Elijah gets up out of bed and plugs it in every night after we put him to sleep.

This one is Elijah's tree (it's actually rosemary)

Adorned with the robot ornaments I made him along with the ornaments Grandma Berhold has gotten him over the years.

This is mine and Jed's tree in our room.

Jed's favorite is a noble fur.

This one is our family tree in the living room.

Elijah helped decorate all of the trees and had so much fun doing it. He would put all of the ornaments in one spot, then count how many he had on one branch. He also pointed out the bigger ornaments and would label them as mommy and daddy ornaments, then point out the small ones and say how cute they were and labeled them as baby sister's (he'd kiss those ones). He's such a cute kid!

Here are some pictures of the kids decorating the big tree.

My brother and sister helping while Elijah is pretending to be a robot with the boxes on his feet.

Here is where the kids kept bunching the ornaments in the same spot. My little sister was being a robot too.

Chloe helped unpack the ornaments and test out our lights for us.

Chloe had a tooth breaking in that day and I guess she thought the ornaments might be a good teether.

Elijah got to put on the star with Jed.

and here are just some bonus pictures of Chloe

She's doesn't like wearing hats, so this is her progression of what happens when we put one on her

Here she is with the hat on (Jed's Granny made this for Elijah when he was her size)

She successfully gets the hat off

and she's so happy with her accomplishment (sorry it's blurry)

We just love her!