It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

You guys know me, right?!  First weekend in November is always the same...see here, here, here...and a little bit here.  ha! We love our traditions.  This year wasn't any different (except it took me forever to get the pictures posted!)  I have no idea how it is the middle of November already, but we are ready around here! Where it the time going?! 

We had  our annual family cleaning / decorating / chilling together day.  And it was fun and productive as always. ( I think that is why I love it so much, everyone helping :) We actually were SO productive I had a garage sale last weekend that was a great success....yay!  I love getting things organized.  Anyway...on to the fun pictures!  First step is to always take all the fall decorations down...

 Then we added some fun Christmas music into the mix.  (Great CD I got from R/, love it!)

The kids were excited and ready to get the tree up!

Sister was ready to put it up herself.

Or maybe they just wanted to empty the box to play in it...silly children.

Brother found a silly hat!

My favorite part is pulling out things we haven't seen all year.  We have Christmas books, ornaments, the nativity, etc that only come out this time of year, so we have so much fun sitting around enjoying everything.

Hubby does a great job on the tree every year.  He is the only one tall enough to actually put it all together. The kids love putting the ornaments on (and Hubby does a great job "arranging" them :)

Sister thought this part was great...the downfall in this plan is, she thinks since SHE put them up, SHE can take them down...um, no.  Leave the tree alone girly.

Brother was a big help too.  I kept asking him to stand on his tippy toes and reach really high, otherwise pretty much all our ornaments hung out together at the front / bottom of the tree :)

Hubby made sure to get a few up top!

Silly hat Sister time...

Hubby used our new camera and got some great pictures of some of the ornaments. 

Yay for a completed tree!  Today I am going to work on wrapping some presents to put underneath...my closet is getting full :)

We finished up our outside decorations and the kids playroom too, but I will have to get pictures of those another day.  Most importantly though, was the nativity.  I love setting this out and we always have a great time talking to the kids about it.  The reason for the season...may it always be front and center.