Normally, I'm completely and totally ready for the holiday season mid November (even before my own birthday!) But this year, I'm just not feeling in the Christmas spirit. I'm over tired and overwhelmed and stressed about some stuff going on but I'm trying to make sure to create holiday traditions for my family. (Sidenote, Elf has gotten really lazy and I stopped taking pictures of his hiding spots. So elf posts are over. I have better things to write about. :) But Elf is still traveling a little bit for Kayla.)
Two weeks ago, I finally insisted we go get a tree. Justin and I have had 2 real trees (out of three Christmases we've been married - last year we were still with my parents.) I'm not opposed to a fake tree, but we really don't have the room now. And there is something a little special about taking the time to go pick a tree together. We went to a place nearby to pick out our tree after Justin got home from work. No cutting down our own this year. We are lucky we got out with two sick kids and all.
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| Justin and Brody |
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| Kayla wasn't terribly impressed with the trees |
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| The nice guy offered to take a photo for us! Our first non professional family photo (I need to be better about this.) |
Then I got to thinking about decorating the tree. Kayla is a little bit too little for real ornaments. She took a lot of Aunt Meg's ornaments off of her tree at her party. We also don't have a ton of ornaments anyways and I didn't want to spend a lot of money. One middle of the night feeding I came up with a brilliant idea (it's amazing how when you become a mom you become just a little bit more crafty.) I had all this extra red and white felt from making their Halloween costumes so I pulled it out, grabbed a pen and scissors (for mommy and daddy obviously) and we tried to teach Kayla how to trace things. We made circles and squares and rectangles. We traced some letters from her bath letters, and Justin tried to show her how to make a snowflake. Daddy and I cut them out and we put hooks on them and had Kayla help us hang them on the bottom of the tree. Free, simple, toddler friendly activity. Yay me!
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| Daddy making a snowflake |
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| Those are my prenatal vitamins: we were using the bottle for a circle shape. |
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| This is what Brody did. :) |
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| Kayla had a really good nap that day...excuse the bed head. |
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| Hugs for Daddy. |
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| Brody watching Kayla and Daddy make ornaments |
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| We used only a few letters, B, K, M, D, H, G...you get the idea :) |
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| Daddy and his little ones |
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| Crooked star and all, I love it. |
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| "Kayla half" of the tree |
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| Four Hales |
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| Brody |
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| Kayla |
What toddler friendly tree ideas do you have?
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