22 Day's Till Christmas!

Photo via: Heather Cowper

Last year was our first Christmas with Dante, this year it is our first Christmas with Ziva!

We took advantage of the sunny weather over the weekend to go and find a tree, and thank goodness we did because now it's back to being cold, wet, and rainy...you know, typical Willamette Valley, Oregon weather.

Visiting the Christmas Tree Farm - Here

And then Dante helped me decorate! Ziva wasn't so inclined, she decided to just nap and let us to all the hard work.

"What is it mom?"

Usually we decorate our tree in the style of a candy cane, with alternating red & white strings of lights and big red satin balls. This year since we got a tiny tree (unlike last years monster) I decided to shake it up with lots of color and a woodland critter/penguin/snowman theme.

Snowmen, penguins, and nutcrackers are my favorite decorations! 

Do you have a theme or favorite way to decorate your home?

As I was unpacking the tree ornaments I became a little teary eyed, Christmas is a special time of year for me, its a celebration of family, relationships, and love. I like to think back on the wonderful people who are no longer here, they are missed all year round but sometimes are harder than others. Christmas is one of those times that hits me hard, my great-grandma, grandma from my mom's side and grandfather from my dad's side are no longer here to celebrate with me and I miss them dearly.

Sasja - retired K9 bomb detection dog, she was deaf when she came to live with us.
Sasja's story HERE

In August of 2013 we adopted Dante and he celebrated Christmas with us for the first time last year, but we also lost Sasja. Her ornament is a beautiful reminder of what a wonderful girl she was and she will be forever missed.

My poor hubby is currently sick so I've been doing all of the Christmas decorating - he's a good sport but the decorating really isn't his "thing". He does enjoy tree hunting with me though. Like I mentioned earlier we usually get the largest tree that we can possibly fit into our home. Hubby likes to roll his eyes at me when I tell him I want it to touch the ceiling. I think he secretly hopes we never have a house with a vaulted ceiling. 

At our previous apartments we had a vaulted living room, and we managed to squeak in a huge tree! It was lots of work to get it in though, we lived on the top floor...there was lots of grumbling, and sweat involved getting it up the stairs, and somehow maneuvering it through the doorway and down the hall into our living room. The hubby ended up tossing it over our balcony to get it down, he said he didn't want to deal with the stairs again.  Haha!

Sometimes I wonder, what do the dogs think of us putting a tree in our house? 

Do they think we're crazy? Or maybe they enjoy having the smell of "outside" in the living room? Or maybe they just don't care...

Is it a place to pee?
Since we've had Dante he has never had an accident in our home, we went over to a neighbors' house last year to see her tree and she was convinced that he had peed on her tree. But he couldn't have, he was with me the whole time! She wouldn't believe me but i'm positive to this day, that it was her jealous black lab marking his territory because Dante was in his house. Oh well, we'll never know.
So far except for eating the tree skirt....Ziva...
The dogs have been great at leaving the tree and decorations alone. But just to be safe I didn't put any breakable ones where they could reach, and the tree is pretty securely in place and out of the way.

My "Not so Wordless" Wednesday