Putting up the Christmas tree!

Arya has been so excited about putting up the Christmas tree!! We picked it up from the garage at the old house yesterday and she wanted to put it up immediately!! It was already kind of late to get started, and you should have heard her trying to convince us to try to get it up anyway.

"We can just put a little bit up and then relax for a little bit and then put a little more up and then rest some more and keep doing that!" She even started pushing the Christmas tree box from the kitchen towards the living room. ("Look how strong I am, Mommy!!")

Oh my, how do you say no to so much excitement? Anyway, I gave in. Sort of. :) I agreed to put together the tree and put the lights on last night, but said we had to wait until today to do the ornaments when we could do them all together.

(Rajeev was resting last night after passing out in the late afternoon, which is another story altogether. He has not been sleeping much at all due to the crazy amount of work he's got to do... working 16 hours a day is a short day for him, and two days last week he worked 25 hours straight, came home and slept 7-8 hours and then went back to work. It has been insane, and I've been really worried about the fact that he's gone for months and months with a schedule of working so many hours and sleeping so little, knowing that a body will eventually just shut down if you don't take care of it. Anyway, after this passing out episode our doctor's office recommended he get checked out at the emergency room. So, we spent a few hours there and all of the tests came back normal and they basically just said, "You need rest." I guess we'll have to pay a lot for those words, but at least we were able to get him checked out and know it wasn't anything additional. I felt relieved after a very scary afternoon.)

So, Arya and I put up the tree and she was so cute as she helped sort each size of branch so we could put the branches and lights on. We have pine cones that came with the tree and they attach with little wires that you can wrap around the branches. She got a kick out of putting those on, and sneaking on a few ornaments as well. She would say with a big excited smile, "Mommy, every time I'm good maybe I can put on a pine cone or an ornament!!"

Alex was also so excited that he couldn't go to sleep! He usually is out by about 8:30 or 9p.m., but last night he was up until 11p.m.!

This afternoon, after a good night's sleep for Rajeev, we all decorated the tree together and it was a lot of fun to do as a family! I'll try to put up some of the photos soon that I took of us all putting up the tree! Merry Christmas everyone!