We always decorate for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving.  The kids have been asking (more like begging) to "put up Christmas" so we set to work this morning.  First step was the tree.  We have an artificial tree (since we used to travel to Chicago before kids), but when John plugged it in, only about 1/3 worked.  Uh oh.  So we decided to venture out for Black Friday and buy a new tree.  Costco ended up being much less crazy than we were anticipating and we came home with a brand new 9' tree.  I don't think we realized just how tall a 9' tree is because this new tree is HUGE.  Even with our vaulted ceilings in the family room, the star almost touches the ceiling.  John is happy because the tree has LED lights.  JGray is happy because there is plenty of room for all the ornaments.  Delia is happy because the tree will flash from colored to white lights in a psychedelic, disco ball kind of way.  And Henry is happy that we put a few (non-breakable) ornaments on the lower branches that he can touch.

I played with the camera this evening and managed to get a few decent pictures of the lit tree (dark with no flash!)