Friday Foto Finish Fiesta - Tree Decorating, Hanna outfits, a visit, and a partridge in a pear tree...

Last Friday night, we FINALLY got our tree decorated. Our tree is prelit with white lights (we add the colored ones) and this year the lights were out in the top section. We had the tree out since Thanksgiving weekend, but Chris was fiddling with it since then to try to get it to work. He finally wound up removing all the lights from the top section and restringing with white lights to match the rest of the tree. By the way, let me point out the awesome Hanna Andersson dress Katie is wearing. They're clothes are so awesome, since they just grow with the kid. It's a size 90 and STILL fits (who cares if the arms are a little short). It's the equivalent of like a size 3 and was bought 2 years ago. Katie has generally grown a size a season and I am currently buying her 110 (a size 5 equivalent). She has never been able to wear the same clothes 2 years in a row from any other clothing store - but she can with most of her Hanna's! Katie was SO excited to help put up ornaments - the first year she got to help! Her new absolute favorite show is Max & Ruby and there is a recent episode where they are putting ornaments on their tree so she was so excited when I asked her if she wanted to help decorate the tree that she jumped up off the couch immediately. She was so cute - I put ornaments for her to use on the arm of the couch and every single one she would ask so sweetly - "Mama, mama, I do this one?" and when reminded over and over again - "Yes, you can do all the ones I put here," I was told "Oh, THANKYOU, thankyou SO much mommy!!!" (Repeat this scenario for every ornament and make sure you pronounce the mama with a stress on the second syllable - whenever Katie is really pleased with me she turns French and I become maMa)

Ok, I am a bad mom though. I've read a bunch of other blogs about the kids decorating and the wonderful moms leaving up the ornament clusters because that's how the kids did it, yada, yada - it's so cute ;), and I did leave up lots of Katie clusters - but I draw the line at every ornament on the same branch. So, I snapped my picture to remember how cute and funny she was and then redistributed appropriately.

And finally, I just wanted to show off the finished tree AND Katie's newest and my current favorite Hanna Andersson outfit. She was all dressed up for this past Sunday when we had a visit from our Aunt Dannette and Aunt Kathy. We had so much fun visiting with them!!! (and Yes, Timmy is wearing clothes from H. A. as well - although the girl clothes are my favorite).

I hope you weren't really expecting a partridge in a pear tree - that was just for effect :)!!