Big Tree

The internet was down, so I hope to publish about Thanksgiving still. We'll see. Today is the first day of Advent, so we worked on getting the house Christmasified. Allyssa woke up from her nap to see the tree all put together and lit (we'd been working on it since Friday, so the fact that something was going on in the corner, she knew, but she didn't think anything of it, probably partly due to the fact that the baby gate keeps her out of that corner right now). She walked up to the gate and smiled and looked big eyed at the tree and said, "Big Tree." She probably said "Big Tree" a million times. She just looked and looked. The tree is quite bright. It has 3600 lights on it. That is 36 strands. I strung them all. It took 3 days of nap times. David assembled the tree and hung most of the ornaments. It looks wonderful. Big Tree.
We also got out Allyssa's wooden nativity set (thanks Grandma and Grandpa). She loved playing with it. After supper we lit an Advent candle and gave her Mary, Joseph, and a donkey to play with while we did a short devotion. She thought that was too great. She loved the candle and when it blew out she said "Uh-oh." She wasn't ready for it to be blown out. She kept telling us "Uh-oh" about the candle after supper. Then, she loaded all the pieces from her nativity onto her booster seat because she couldn't see them well enough on the table (we did devos at the table). After a little bit I moved the pieces to the area beside the tree and turned the lights back on. Allyssa happily played there most of the evening. Big tree.