O Tannenbaum

Our little tree has been up for weeks but I'll post about it now anyways :)

This was the first year that we let Nikolai help decorate...

...and obviously, most of the ornaments ended up on the lower level of the tree, all in one place ;)

We spread them all back out eventually (and after a few handmade ornaments got broken, instituted a rule that our sweet toddler could no longer take ornaments off the tree at will). 

All the same, it was really fun to decorate it together!

I did some things differently with the tree this year: 1) I finally replaced the old ribbon we had as a garland with a chain of colorful paper circles, which may or may not go back on the tree next year, but this year I really like it :)  2) I re-made the tree skirt! The one I made 2 years ago was too small and I finally got tired of it, so I pulled it apart and used the scraps of the old with some red fabric to make a bigger one. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out!

Also this year, we've started including Nikolai in our nightly Advent calendar ritual. 

He sits moderately well through the reading of a scripture and singing of a song, but his favorite part is obviously that candy :)

The first time we did it, we got the candy out before we read the scripture. There were 6 caramel Hershey's kisses--2 for each of us.  Well, Nikolai, who almost never gets candy, was so excited that he immediately ripped the wrappers off his and stuffed them in his tiny mouth as fast as he could. He did it so quickly, neither of us even noticed when he took one of each of ours and ate them too! His little face was so intense and earnest and adorable that we obviously couldn't be grumpy with him, so we laughed instead :)