Christmas Decorations

Ever since the girls left, we haven't been nearly as good as decorating for Christmas as we used to. In fact, this last year we never took the tree down. Tim complained that he missed out on the fun of decorating the tree this year. I guess we'll have to give in and take it down this time. We do have other Christmas decorations that we keep up all year as well. And some of them are not your normal angels with halos. This is Edward - our mechanical butler - who is technically a Halloween decoration, but we augmented him for Christmas. He still scares people silly. If you read my previous posts, you saw my praises for the Festival of Nativities that we had. Because of that I have purchased several nativity sets. Only two of them have arrived so far. The first of these pictures is the nativity set that we already had, and I have to go on record as saying that I really, really like it.

The second one is my favorite of the three - because I have always loved stories about Indians. I'll have to see if I can find a few more animals for this one. And I really should get a spotted Indian pony in place of the camel.

The third one is Bill's favorite. Very simple, just Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus - Antarctic style.

In my daughter's latest blog she talked about Muddy balls. These were specially decorated balls made by Bill's grandmother, whose nickname was Muddy (her girls couldn't pronounce 'mommy' quite right). We treasure these. They have a prominant place on our tree. Unfortunately the pictures are a bit blurry, but hopefully you will get the idea of how beautiful these are. I decided to take them off the tree for the pictures, as you can see the details a bit better. The last red one I photographed both sides, since they're quite different!

This isn't all of them, but I have to save some suprises for next Christmas. Hope your holidays are bright, cheerful and not TOO white. Merry Christmas everybody!