O Christmas Tree

Tonight, we finished decorating our Christmas tree. I always say that I would like to have different themes from year to year, but I know that I won't be able to for the fact that Daddy doesn't like to have too many seasonal decorations to store. And this year, I definitely was not wanting to decorate with last year's theme of the Longhorns (especially the football season we have had).

I wasn't sure what I was going to do this year until the time of the book fair; and I can't take credit for this year's theme. One of the ways Andrew's school raises money during the book fair is to raffle off wreaths made by each class. And one of the most popular ones (and most sought after) was a wreath decorated with Thomas the Train items including a wooden track and lots of trains attached. Andrew especially loved seeing the wreath every day we walked to and from his classroom. So, I thought to myself instead of a wreath why not take it up a notch and do our whole tree with trains. I talked to Daddy about it; and he thought it would be a good idea since Andrew might not be into trains as much as he is in future Christmases to come. And it's not like we don't have more than ample trains.

But we wondered if Andrew would be okay with putting his trains on the tree and thus, wouldn't be able to play with them. But when we asked him about it, he was totally on board. I told him that we wouldn't put his favorite trains on the tree so that he could still play with them, but he was adamant about putting some of them on (but I managed to talk him out of some of them though). Out of the remaining trains, he also helped pick out which ones he wanted on the tree; and even after we had enough trains on the tree, he still wanted to give up even more of his trains. Drew has loved helping putting the ornaments on the tree. At first, he put them towards the bottom on the tree because that's where he could reach. But then one time, we let him stand on a chair to put on an ornament and after that, he always wanted to do it that way. Another thing I thought was cute was when he put two trains close enough together so that the magnets attached so that they were connected. He's still all about trains having a back!!

Last but not least, the coup de grace of our tree this year, Daddy put up a G-gauge battery-operated train underneath the tree. Andrew totally loves it already! It's a little older for him so we have set out some rules about touching it and playing with it. We'll see how that goes!

And I know in the one picture with Andrew playing with the train looks terrible, but it was the best of the two I snapped before he left to go play something else.