Peace and the Quietts

(For those of you who do not wish to see a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving, I'm giving you ample notice to LOOK AWAY. Return to this blog next Friday, and you'll be all good.)

Now, for those of you who want to take a peek at the sharing of lights in this time of early darkness, who want to see joy on the faces of children, who want to see the adventure known as Peace and the Quietts, please proceed:

Once upon a time... there were two children: Aaron James and Alyssa Renee. Now, the Quiett children are anything but quiet: they are actually full of laughter, questions, and basically, full of LIFE.

I casually mentioned that I was looking forward to the annual tree decorating at the home a-la-Brenda, and the children jumped all over the chance to be a part of the festivities. Game on.

This is the BEFORE photo.

Every good adventure needs a before photo.

We no sooner dragged the tree box into the living room, than Aaron had it unpacked, and was putting the branches in their places. He, and I quote, asked me to "show him one example of how to spread the branches and he'd take it from there."

Take it from there, he did.

People, it's a tree skirt.
THAT part of the photo makes sense.

As for the garland around the head, well, um...

Alyssa said she would look better in the skirt,
and quickly snatched it away from me.
Dang, she's right.

I bet some garland on her head would help, though.

Let me get this straight:
one child shall put up the tree, and the other shall cook us food?
I'm keeping these children.

Now the REALLY amusing part of this photo are the headphones. The stove (not Alyssa, of course) burned one part of the French toast, filling the kitchen with lovely plumes of odorous smoke. I opened up the doors and turned on the fans to quickly air out the place, but Alyssa was still terrified that the fire alarms would go off. We're working through her alarm issues...

Aaron just found the whole thing amusing,
and kept putting that tree together.

Piano benches are really helpful
when trees become taller than you.

We can do it!

We're about to get to the very top of the tree, and Aaron stops so that "we can all put the last part of the tree on together." Add a self-timer on the camera, and you have a happy tree and lovely moment!

"What do you mean the lights
aren't already on the tree, Ms. G?"

My favorite part of the entire evening? They'd take turns putting strands of lights on the tree. One would dance around the tree, and then call out, "Your turn". The other would plug in their new strand of light, and off they'd dance. "Your turn!" as they'd make the hand-off. So sweet!

Here's just one minute of said joy:

(Singing, dancing, laughing, lights. What a night!

Glad I don't have any neighbors downstairs at this time!)

This child was FASCINATED with being UNDER the tree.

Silly boy, he needs my tree skirt!

One teeeeny problem: how are we
going to get the tree over to the corner?

How Alyssa happened to grab the camera at the right time, I'll never know, but she happened to catch the exact moment where we almost lost the entire tree. I was laughing rather hard, but I think Aaron would have been crushed had all of his hard work taken a tumble!

The adventure continues: it's a tradition in the Greenwald home to toss Army men into the tree. (My brother, Brad used to play with them all the time as a little kid, and throwing them into our mother's perfect, pristine tree has brought us great joy over the years. Sorry, Mom....)

ANYWHO, I realized I had not properly prepared for the season by securing the necessary little green men, so off to the Dollar Tree we went. They finished the entire "Spot the Alphabet Game" in the 5 minute car ride across town. They located something for A, for B, for C...

Only after Aaron accurately divided 48 Army men
among three people could we begin to chuck them into the tree.

Ready...aim...

FIRE!!!

Every good adventure needs some cookie time.

Pretty sure this kid adores math.
He divides up everything evenly.

Would you look at that?!?
That boy put up the entire tree!

Finishing touches: both kids are awesome
little Christians, so the conversations
about the true meaning of the season were great!

Me: "Aaron, where did you put the snowpeople?"
Aaron: "You mean the family? Why, they are together, of course!"

At one point, Aaron requested yet another cookie. When asked where he put the three I had just given him, he replied "Well, two went in my mouth and the other one, um, disappeared."

Found it. IN THE MILK.

And they lived happily ever after.
'Tis the season!