One of my favourite days of the year!

I have such wonderful memories of growing up and putting up our Christmas tree every year. My mom still invites us and the kids over each year to help do hers too.

On Sunday we did something we almost never do...we skipped hockey for a day! We spent the day organizing and tidying the house and getting the tree up, then we were off to see our Jordie Boy in the Santa Parade, then home for a yummy steak dinner and decorating of the tree. It was a pretty chill day for the Barrows without the usual Sunday 4 hours spent at the rink and then family dinner. It was exactly the day that I needed to get in to the spirit of the season.

We usually do Christmas jammies for the kids for Christmas Eve but this year switched it up and gave them to them on December 1 with their advent calendars so they can actually wear the jammies for the month and can wear them to school on the last day as well if they chose to!

Here's some of my fave photos from the day!

The finished product after the kids had gone to bed

The excitement of opening up the bins and seeing all of our special ornaments from over the years! 

This was supposed to be a Christmas present but her brother found it in our room and promptly gave it to her and she relentlessly pleaded with us to put it on the tree no matter how many times we tried to rehide it. She has quite the memory for things she really wants! 

She is fascinated with the tree this year and I can already tell it's going to be a really special Christmas for us! 

We always giggle whenever we look at this dollar store angel that still graces the top of our tree. Some of my favorite ornaments are the ones that Jim and I bought the first year that we put up a tree together. They were all super cheap from the newly opened Dollarama but I love them! 

 New Pug Pajamas 

I am so looking forward to some down time over the holidays to enjoy some quality family time that I feel like we haven't gotten a lot of lately. I'm off from December 14-January 1 and Jim is off from December 19 till around then as well so we plan on doing some skating, walking/hiking a trail or two, Polar Bear swimming for the two biggest J's, and hopefully some quality Disney+ snuggling on the couch too. Oh and maybe a basement clean out to get the biggest kid finally into his own room....but we'll see how motivated we end up feeling!