Christmastime is here again... Laughter and good cheer!

Finally! We have solved our holiday lighting problem and now the tree is up and the living room looks all Christmassy. We love Christmas time. The decorating! The eating! The presents! We've been playing our favorite holiday albums over and over and over again, and we're getting ready for our first big holiday season in the new house with Baby (we ordered curtains for those windows, by the way, but they haven't been delivered yet).

We've got the Nativity set up on our mantelpiece, and you can see our stockings reflected in the mirror. Why are they hanging from the door, you ask? Because when I hung them from the mantel they spun around like windsocks. They're on the door until I can find a better hanging-up solution.

Many of our most loyal readers will know about the saga we've had with our tree. First of all, I'll tell you that it's fake. Fake-ity fake fake. I don't care how much nicer a real tree smells; we paid £65 for the fake one four years ago, and it's still going strong. However, when we bought it, we were still living in our tiny flat on Devonshire Road, and we didn't realize at the time how big the tree was going to be once it was set up and positioned in our miniature living room. But, we assembled the whole thing anyway, and this is what it looked like:

I know, crazy, right? We had to edge around it to get to the table to eat Christmas dinner that year! In subsequent years we tried assembling only the top part of it, and decorating that, but even that was a little over the top. And around the middle. And big on the bottom. So we're delighted to finally have a room where we can put up the whole thing... even if it is still a little bit squished. We'll find the perfect solution eventually.

Poor little Isabelle has been very bewildered by all the activity. What? A giant tree in the living room? Why is there a s'more on it? But she's been enjoying the time in her baby bouncer while we decorate. We figured out she'd have an easier time of it while wearing her little Robeez shoes for traction, and now she's able to really get a good boing going.


Look how cute! I think she's happiest when she's bouncing!


It's going to be really hard to be away from my family and friends in America for Isabelle's first Christmas (this is only my second one away from home), and already I'm feeling it. I'm missing Susan's kitty angel, and my mom's cookies (I don't know how she does it!), and singing in the choir Christmas Eve, and the snow snow snow piling up in Chicago. But that's growing up, and our lives changing, and now that we're parents ourselves we will forge our own way ahead. We're still gonna look out for Santa, though.