Fairy Lights, Thanksgiving and Songs

Yesterday we took time out to get the rest of the house sorted out with regards to decorations.

With Samuel and William there is no such thing as "overkill" and so their room is now festooned with tinsel, streamers, a Christmas tree (3 ft tree from Poundland), and their home made decorations. I have to say, having let them decorate their own tree, it looks really very good.

They also have lights on the tree, lights around the room, and net lights in the window!

Josh also has his own tree this year with lights on. It is also his turn to have the flashing/changing lights, so he's got them around his room. His room is less like a grotto, but still well decorated.

The hall way has fairy lights all around - no need for anyone to use lights now till the decorations come down as the fairy lights are more than enough to see by! Wherever possible we've used lower energy ones.

The front room looks nice, quite tasteful really, and I got the tree done late last night after Jonathan had come up to bed. So far (she says..) he hasn't trashed it! He likes the room how it is now, with more space for him to play and his little table centre stage in the middle of the room.

Outside, we have two bells and a star, flashing blue lights all along the bottom of the house (above the windows) and today Roarke put up blue flashing LED lights along the gutter, after we went out to clean them (made it more worth the effort of digging the long ladder out of the garage and climbing all that way up!).

We also have icicle (blue) lights in the window of our front room, so all in all from across the street the house is well lit up. The boys asked for the blue lights as we all prefer them to look at.

Yesterday we also started this year's "thanksgiving" tradition. In previous years we have written every day on a holly leaf something we are thankful for, and have glued it onto a wreath. We have also had a little felt pocket for every day, which had a chocolate coin in for each boy, which they have had after writing their leaf.

This year I've printed out 31 golden Christmas stars, and we are taking it in turns to write something that we are thankful for on a star, which is then being attached to some red string and hung along one wall as a decoration. Then they get a chocolate coin!

Today we were double booked, but because we spent so long on the gutters, I didn't get to do Croydon Museum (one of the things) and instead we went down to Monkey Bizz - myself, Samuel and William. All the way back the two of them sang Christmas songs to me! They are currently addicted to watching all the christmas song compliations on the music channels....

Roll on Christmas day!