Christmas-ing

We got home from Park City around noon today. The kids were eager to set up the tree. I said "Not until the house gets cleaned up!" (which I had said we had to do before Park City but didn't quite finish...) So those that wanted to Christmas up the house had to unpack, clean their rooms, practice, and such. Abi worked hard since she was the one who wanted the trees up the most. As she vacuumed up the front room, she thought she saw an earring that looked like my gold and diamond earrings that I had let Natalie borrow for a few days (since her ears were infected). Someone one of the earrings was on the floor in the front room. Abi realized what it was after she had already vacuumed it up. She called Natalie over to see if she was wearing both earrings... nope. It must have fallen out when Natalie was wrestling with Joseph in the front room. Ok, so we start to try and pick out the dust and dirt from the bag and set it out on paper towels along the floor, and we shake and poke through it looking for the earring.

No luck. Finally we cut open the bag. Still nothing. Natalie kinda looks through those again and I go to the vacuum to see if it is stuck in the brush or the hose somewhere.

After having no luck during our previous 20 minutes of searching, Natalie said a prayer for God's hlep, and shortly after than, there we gratefully found it in the hose. Whew! Then we finished vacuuming, and THEN we were ready to bring up the trees. Two lights on the white tree were out, and have been burned out for the past 2 years I think, so this year we finally decided to get it all the way off. Abi and I cut the wires with scissors. 

It took a while, but we did it. The lights on the bottom of the tree still work, but they are a soft white and the white strands of lights I have for the top are bright LED lights... so next year we might cut those off of the bottom so that all the lights will be uniform, but we called it good for today and finished putting up the tree. The boys helped decorate. Everyone was in their Santa Hats. 

And done - we've got our two trees up and once again I didn't have to do very much of it, so yay.