"A blue furry Charles Dickens who hangs out with a rat?"

This evening, Stephen, Joseph, Joseph's awesome Aunt Theresa, and I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol and decorated our 9 foot tall Christmas tree together.

I love The Muppet Christmas Carol. It's my all time favorite adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and one of my very favorite Christmas movies. You know... because I'm 5. And, yes, of course I want to see the new Muppet movie. Who doesn't? ;)

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Besides, how can you not like a movie with lines like this:

Rizzo the Rat: I fell down the chimney and landed on a flaming hot goose!

Gonzo: You have all the fun!

Side note: I'm notorious for crying during movies. Seriously, it's really bad. However, tonight I cried when the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come showed that Tiny Tim had died. Even though I know he won't actually die. Really?! (-.-) For once, I'm going to blame it on the pregnancy hormones. I've been watching that movie for almost 20 years now and never once have I cried during it. Following that line of thought, hormones must be responsible for my crying during The Tigger Movie yesterday? Right? And hormones have to explain why I cried when the government exiled the Autobots from Earth in Transformers 3, right? Yeah. Definitely blaming pregnancy hormones for that one... Optimus Prime just isn't that cute.

Enough about my super-pathetic tear ducts. On with the tree decorating! Just look at how excited Joseph is at the prospect of handling all of those mostly unbreakable ornaments!

This is going to be Joseph's second Christmas, but it's the first time he's ever really been involved in the decorating process. One and a half is plenty old enough to help decorate the tree.

We started with candy canes. They seemed to be the easiest thing for him to hang on the branches.

And so what if he hung all 15 of the candy canes in the same area. Candy canes should always be within reach, right?

At least he didn't try to eat the candy canes like last year...

After we ran out of candy canes, we started giving Joseph other ornaments to hang. He did okay with some of the hooks and loops...

And with some... well, he laid them on top of the branches. Seems perfectly logical to me.

He also hung his "Baby's First Christmas" ornament... about five or six times.

Usually on the same branch with 2 or 3 other ornaments that he was responsible for hanging. (I may have done some ornament rearranging after he went to bed...)

And to think... The last time he held that ornament, he didn't have any hair...

Last year, he just tummy crawled around on the floor and played with sleigh bells while we did all the work.

*sniffle*

This year, after seeing that Daddy was wearing a Santa hat, Joseph decided to wear his Santa hat too. Daddy was sooo proud.

Of course, he snatched it off his head when I tried to put it on him earlier. Little punk.

They are ridiculous together.

But very cute. Silly boys.

Finally, we put up the star. The star doesn't touch the ceiling this year since the tree is on the other side of the room where, it would seem, the ceiling is higher. Bonus! Joseph got to check out the star first hand. Next year, we'll actually let him help put it up there.

Look closely at the wall behind Stephen and you can see that fireplace drywall mudding is going on. More on that later.

At the end of the night, we turned off all the other lights in the room and let Joseph check out his handiwork.

Then it was time for a bath and bed. Guess who didn't like that idea?

He went limp as a wet noodle and tried to play dead. I guess he had too much fun decorating the tree with his aunt!

I'm with him. Who wants to go to bed when you can just sit and relax in a room solely lit by a giant Christmas tree?

We should have our outdoor lights up sometime soon. Can't wait! I'm so excited for Christmas!