Christmas Tree

Well, Ellie and I finally got around to making Christmas come to the Tippin household. Yesterday we put on some Christmas music (except I can't find our favorites... about 6 cds are missing... and I don't know which box to look in because I thought the musicish ones were already unpacked), grabbed the Christmas boxes from the basement and decorated! By the time Seth got home from work, we'd finished the tree and added our nativity set, etc to the living room. We also added a few Christmas touches to other rooms around the house. We didn't get to the family room, though. I'm not sure I'll get to it today, either, but that room is in serious need of some Christmas Cheer.

Last night we also began the Christmas baking. We decided to start it out with some traditional sugar cookies. Unfortunately, just as I began to bake we realized we only had about a cup of sugar. So, after this first batch the baking halted and Ellie and I will have to run to the store today. We're getting ramped up to make goodies, goodies and more goodies so we can put together 10 to 12 plates of Christmas Yum for bunches of our neighbors.

Anyway, back to the Christmas tree. Seth, Ellie and I were hanging out in the living room just after Seth got home from work. I had finished decorating the tree earlier in the afternoon while Ellie had a nap and then we hadn't spent any time in the living room. So, this was Eleanor's first real chance to check out the decorated tree. She crawled up to it right away and started pulling on ornaments. Of course, I'd expected this, so there are only unbreakable ones down low. But, she soon realized she couldn't pull any ornaments down. So, she went for the gold beads... of course... but I hadn't really thought this part through. Soon she had a great length of the beads in her hand and she pulled and pulled on them, trying to get more down. Luckily, I remembered one strand hadn't quite been enough to get aroud the whole tree, so I'd added a short length right at the end (this must have been a problem on a previous year, too). I was able to convince her to give me the strand she had and handed her the end of the short one. She thought this was great and preceeded to pull the whole strand off the tree (while I put the other one back on). After that, she played and played and played with the beads. She even got up this morning and crawled right to where she left them last night and started waving them around again like they were the best toy in the world. I wouldn't say I'd choose to give her such a thing as a toy, but as long as she's supervised and as long as they keep her happy - yay (there is no way the strand can come apart or anything, don't worry, there's no choking hazard).

Oh, and while I was decorating the tree and she was awake, she discovered a whole box of jingle bells. It was really fun to watch her figure out how to get the box open. Now she has 5 or so jingle bells hanging around instead of just one - and - a couple are GOLD. Ooooh. So cool and exciting!