Christmas Festivities

I'm still playing catch-up, and the post about Christmas is proving very intimidating because of the sheer number of pictures to sort through and the insane amount of holiday activities in which we participated.  So, in order to keep my sanity, I will have to break the Christmas post down into a few sections.

First up, house decor and pre-Christmas antics.  

Christmas came just a few short weeks after we moved into the house.  While there were still hundreds of boxes to be unpacked, I went a little Christmas crazy and insisted we put up the majority of our decorations.  Unfortunately, the artificial tree we had in Virginia was entirely to small for our new house.  So, we bought a giant 12' real tree to fill the space.  And, Martin did his best to kill himself by hanging lights on the outside of our house.  All the decorations weren't perfect, but if definitely helped make this Christmas feel like we were at home.

Our 12 foot tree half way decorated.  Two tree stands, a flooded floor, two tree skirts, and a whole lot of headaches.  This quickly became known as the tree from hell.

Making the home feel Christmas cozy.

Our sad little fake tree made found a decent home in the library.

Ratatouille - our Elf - finds a spying spot in the ceiling fan.  Peyton had a blast finding him each morning.  

Clark Griswold?  Is that you?

Hanging lights...

Casa Hellmer on Christmas Eve.

Zoolights!  It was a huge success last year, and this year lived up to the hype as well.

LIGHTS!!

Someone is all hopped up on goofballs.

Christmas party for the kids at Daddy's office.

No rest for Santa's special elf.  Santa delivered Peyton's present a few days early to ensure Daddy had enough time to build it.  Good thing - it took Daddy, Umple Jim, and Grandpa close to three days to complete.