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Christmas spirit is in full swing in the house, yesterday we took the kids to see Santa then we picked out a Christmas tree. Every year we take the kids to Bass Pro Shop at CrossIron Mills to see Santa. They get to meet Santa, and get a free picture. Also they always have the Santa area decorated like the North Pole. The last couple of years we would just go line up to meet Santa, but this year they had the line ups and appointment cards.
We didn’t have to grab one, but the people with the appointment cards get in quicker. With three kids that sounds a lot more ideal, then standing around for hours. Despite the convenience side of it, I felt bad for the other kids in the non-appointment line up. Most of them too young to understand why we would get in before them, even though they’ve been standing there longer. See they’ve got two-line ups, one for people without an appointment card and one for people with a card. It wasn’t until we were in our line up and Santa got back from his cookie break, that I started to feel better.
See they don’t just take our line-up, they take someone from our line then they take someone from the other line-up. Then they keep going back and forth until our line-up is finished, then once all the people in our line-up are done they just do the no appointment line. That sounded a lot nicer, than just us having a front row seat. We were fortunate enough to get an appointment card, but a lot of parents don’t have the time to get a card not to mention there’s only a certain amount of appointment slots.
Tonight the kids decorated the Christmas tree, we got out the Christmas lights and the kids helped me put them on. Then they went through all of our Christmas ornaments, and picked their favorites. Keera had made an ornament at school this year, so that went up on the tree. Along with some ornaments from when I was little, including a Grinch ornament which I’m pretty sure is my Christmas spirit animal. 😛
A couple of years ago I bought some ornament containers, because I was tired of opening up bins and finding broken ornaments. These Sterilite containers are super great, you can stack them and there durable. They’ve survived three kids so far, and we haven’t had a broken ornament since (besides the occasional ones that the kids break off the tree lol.) I’ve attached a link below, in-case you want to check them out 🙂
The kids love to decorate the Christmas tree, but they fight over who wants to put what ornament where. *Sigh* Thankfully most of the time they can agree on a solution, even if they need a nudge in the right direction from one of us. Emilee was able to partake in the decorating this year, even though she wanted to put all the decorations right side by side. She’s got some great older siblings though, they helped her pick out a spot and put it on the tree. We have some breakable decorations, that we like to put out. In previous years we never really had a kid-safe area to display them, so when we rented this apartment I knew the fireplace would be the perfect spot to display them.
I’m finally starting to feel a little Christmasy… only a week till Christmas. 
Do you put up a Christmas tree? If you do, do you like to decorate with your kid(s) or solo?