Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time....

Chris and his friends (the Ayoub brothers) have this funny little "tradition" that takes place every year at this time. Whoever hears the song "A Wonderful Christmas Time" (is that it's name?), calls the others to play it on their voicemail. I don't know when or why this started, but I think it's funny, escpecially since we listen to the IPod most of the time, so I don't know how he plans to hear it on the radio. Oh well...it's a goofy tradition that officially starts the Christmas season.
The other official start to the season is all of the fun decorations. Since this is our first Christmas in the house, I was a little excited to do the decorating. BUT, Chris and I decided to wait to buy all of the extra decorations until right after Christmas when everything is on sale..so, I had to make do with what we had. Luckily, my Grandma and Chris's mom gave us a bunch of stuff, and although we don't always share the same sense of "style", I was able to use quite a bit of their stuff.
We have a small artificial tree (about 4 feet), that we have used for the past few years, as well as a very thin, and small Christmas stick tree that we got from a garage sale this past summer. With the tall ceilings in our house, we HAD to go out and get the biggest, realest, most Christmas-y tree we could find. So, all in all, we have 3 trees. The tall one is in the living room. The artificial tree is in the loft, and the Christmas stick is in the kitchen with non-breakable ornaments for the kiddies.
My mom and dad were here to help us get everything decorated, and I think it all turned out pretty nice. We still have a few little additions to make, such as the garland on the banister, and the gifts under the tree, but other than that, we are done. The shopping is almost done (except for Sean...my brother is so hard to buy for this year!). All we have to do is sit around, drink tea and cocoa, listen to Christmas music and watch the tree sparkle.