lights, Lights, LIGhts and more LIGHTS!!!!

Last year our pre lit tree died.  Dustin worked and worked to get the lights to work but after hours and days of trying we put strands of lights on the tree and moved on to decorating.  This year we decided to buy a plain jane no pre lit tree because in the past 9 years I can not tell you how many pre lit trees we have bought.  They just don't last and they are hard to replace.  And I am a picky Christmas tree person.  I Love Big, Fat, Full Trees!!!  Don't give me a skinny tree!  :) hahaha!!!  The saying "Go Big or Go Home" always plays in my mind when I look for trees.  I was shopping for a new tree and found not one but two!  And so I bought both.  One was on clearance for $15.  And that tree was the 1st one I put together and let the girls decorate.  And lets just say it doesn't meet the "Go Big or Go Home"! Its 6ft tall alright but about 2 feet is the metal rod and 4 feet is the tree.  :)  But my girls love it and it has found a home in their living room or as Abigail calls it "the gold room"!  Haahaa!  The other one is a beautiful (for an artificial), fluffy, fat, tree!  Once I got the trees in I wanted to get busy decorating but we have no lights.  So off to Wal Mart we go.  And I have forgotten all the choices of lights to choose from.  I think more now than 9 years ago.  LED lights, rope lights, colored lights, white lights, old time big bulb lights, etc.   There is a lot of choices for lights!  I am a white lights on the tree gal.  Its beautiful and bright!  Love it!!  My girls and hubby like colored.  I like the colored but when you sit in your living room with the lights off and the tree on nothing is prettier than the glowing white lights!  I love white lights, like colored and HATE runner/chaser lights!  They make me nervous!  Now once you figure out the kind of lights you get to choose the amount of lights!  20, 50, 100, 150, 300 Oh My!!!  Now remember we have had pre lit trees for the past 9 years.  So how many lights do need!!!  I go out to the lawn and garden center and look at the pre lit tree boxes to see how many lights are on the trees I have.  The 6ft tree had a little of 400 and the big one had 600.  All I kept thinking was no no no that just simply want do!!  So our little 6ft but really 4 ft tree has 600 colored lights and our 7 1/2 for tree has 900 white lights (so far)!  :)  I am thinking of adding more!  Remember Go Big and Bright!!  And during the process of adding lights to the tree I now remember why I Like pre-lit trees!  No ornaments are on our big tree now because we love to put them on as a family.  And our family will not be all together until next week!  I cant wait to get our ornaments out and remember when we got this ornament or that ornament.  Sweet memories!  Abigail will ask is this my ornament? How old was I?  I put names and year on their ornament of the year.  They each get one ornament from Hallmark each year.  And the ornaments are usually what they love that year.  Anabeth picked out Minnie Mouse and Sophia the 1st this year and when you play or talk to her its all about those two.  Abigail has not picked one out yet but we haven't went to the actual store to look either.  That day is on our Nawlin Family Fun calendar for next week!  :)  Happy Decorating! Keep it Merry and Bright!

Its Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas!!!

Christmas!!!!!   Its the most Wonderful time of the year!  To me it is!!!  It does not take a lot to put me in the Christmas Spirit!  Simply because I love, love, love, love, love, (OK you get it) Love Christmas!!!  I really don't know why I love the season so much but I do!  Is it because this time of the year some people are more generous, fun loving, full of life, grateful or it might be that a part of me simply still believes in Santa!  You know you get underwear when you stop believing!  Hahaha!!! And notice I said "some" people.  Some people Christmas does the opposite effect on their  attitudes.  They cant stand a Christmas Song/carol, movies, decorations and they are usually in the worst mood.  I hope I never become one of the scrooges of Christmas (no offense to anyone who doesn't love Christmas as much as I do!)   I think I get more excited every year and I am more excited than my kids!  I am that Christmas Nut that starts counting and planning on December 26th.  I could listen to Christmas music all day every day.  It simply puts me in a good mood. 

While the Christmas Mood is jingling around in me I wanted to share some of our Christmas Traditions with you!  Today I have been working on our "Nawlin Family Fun" Calendar.  You really should try this because you put everything on the calendar starting on your time frame which ours is the Thanksgiving weekend.  I look at the activities we did last year and remember the fun times or the lets not do that again! Haha!!  With anything you do you will have the "what was I thinking" or "we really need to do this again" or "its almost there but still needs some work".  Planning is right up my alley so I take my time and organize each activities by the days of the week, church events, etc.  Its a lot of work in planning but if it simply puts a smile on my child's face it is worth every minute!  And some of you may be like "oh well money is tight this year so we will skip".  I encourage you not to do that!  90% of what I do is free or cost very little!!  Check out ABC Family's website for some great Traditions Christmas Movies, Ride around town to look at Christmas lights (or go to another town like we do to see the neighborhood display that is absolutely outstanding!), Elf usually brings us lots of Christmas crafts to do, take it back old school and make your Christmas cards, we roast marshmallows outside by the fire and watch a Christmas movie under the stars, game nights, baking cookies, Christmas caroling (I haven't convinced anyone to do this with yet but I am still trying!!), check your local church's for Christmas programs because this is truly the MAIN reason for Christmas!  This year since I can bake a little more I plan on taking some goodies to our neighbors.  You just never know when someone might need a little Christmas Cheer!  We do Christmas Shoe boxes to simply teach our girls their is more to Christmas than Santa and getting presents.  One year I want to adopt a child and have my girls provide Christmas for them.  There is soo much I want to do and such short season to do it in!!! 

Go outside the box this year and provide an one of a kind Christmas that your kids will talk about 20 years from now!!!  Last year was the first time I let Abigail make our Christmas cards.  She loved it!!!  and with our Christmas card list she took the time to think about that person and decorate, draw and color a card especially for them.  We, I tend to get so into our Christmas that everything has to be perfect and we lose the sight of the real meaning of Christmas.  Our girls decorate our tree.  And yes when you come to my house you will see areas of our tree that has no ornaments and some areas that are covered with tons of ornaments.  (Drives me nuts at times!)  Its not perfect but to our girls its perfect to them!  I will have years of "perfect" trees when the kids are out of the house but the ones they decorate will always be my favorite.  The Christmas cards Abigail did last year are my favorite!  Simplify your Christmas by not being "perfect" and Enjoy the special time and bond with your love ones!  (And I learned this last year through a devotion I did!) :)

So what are your Christmas Traditions?