Oh Christmas Tree...

We put our Christmas decorations up on Saturday and had such a great day together! Carter and Jamey went to Walmart to ring the bell for the Salvation Army bucket from 10 to 11:30 and were all bundled up with it being such a chilly day. They had fun and Jamey said Carter was good and definitely recruited a few extra donations that wouldn't have come otherwise! I spent the am putting up all the garland and other decorations besides the tree. We then had a family trip, which we NEVER do, to Target and then to pick out our tree. It's normally quite an ordeal b/c none of them seem to be just right to me, but this year we were in and out pretty quickly without much ado (Jamey will probably beg to differ on that!). I did the lights on the tree and Jamey bravely tackled the lights on a tree outside by our driveway! 5 strands later and about 1/5 of the way around the tree, he was pooped and so I finished it up just a few minutes ago( to his credit we ran out of lights, too)! I can't wait to see it at night but I hope it will look good b/c we both spent a lot of time and have a few battle scars to show from our fight with the tree! Carter helped me put the ornaments on after his nap and he had so much fun putting as many ornaments as he could in one central location on the tree! It was so cute that he wanted to help and he loved checking them all out and bossing Cooper around telling him not to touch ANY of them!


I worked yesterday and Jamey took them both to church for the 9:00 service and then stayed for Carter's Sunday school and for the church's annual meeting. It was a big day for Jamey (even though he likes to downplay it!) as he was nominated by a few members of our church to run for the vestry, which is an enormous honor and such a testament to how well thought of he is in our church. I hated so much I couldn't be there to vote for him and support him through it - there were 8 people running and 4 would be elected and Jamey won! It makes me so proud of him and makes me think of how proud my sweet Grandma would be of him if she were here to know about it - she would've hands down been the first congratulatory call!


Today I had Carter's 3 year old parent - teacher conference; I didn't know there was such a thing until recently but I was glad to get an update on how he does! They were very complimentary and said that he is very sweet and kind to all the other children and that he pretty much gets along with anyone. They said his language is great and that he can carry on a conversation with anyone (I'd say we all already knew that!). They also said he's very deliberate with his work and that he takes a long time to do his projects b/c he wants it just right - I can't imagine where he gets the perfectionist trait from! They want us to work on his coloring skills to speed him up a little bit so that he'll have time to finish all the things they work on at school!