The kids have been begging to see Rise of the Guardians. After a disappointing trip to the zoo on Saturday afternoon (playground closed and hardly any animals out – I guess it is December…), we decided to hit the 7:15 showing. Of course, it was only playing in 3D so we paid $37 for three tickets – insane. Between the tickets and the popcorn, we could have bought groceries for the month. But the kids loved it.

On Sunday morning, we woke up to sheets of rain. Hence, no stroller ride. So we decided to put up the Christmas tree. I brought up my grandma’s tree and the kids and I assembled it to surprise Jon while he was out for coffee. Mario assembled the metal base of the tree from scratch; he figured out how to put the metal feet in the circle and where to place the screws. There may be an engineer in our future…. Meanwhile, Maria perused through the cardboard boxes of ornaments picking out select ones that she remembered creating or that she knew had meaning to us. Jon’s blue ornament from his teacher, the ornament I gave my grandma when I was ten, Mario’s gingerbread ornament from his old daycare. Ms. Sentimental she is.

We blasted Christmas music from the tv and went to town on the tree. I love our time spent decorating the tree. We talk about years’ past, we admire the ornaments that we forgot about it since last year, we laugh, hysterically. We are completely immersed in the process and it is delightful. Jon always hunts down his favorite ornament to place strategically on the tree; Mario places all of his in one big clump; and Ri directs us all on where things should go.

And there you have it. Our darling Christmas tree lighting up our abode. Later in the evening we realized we forgot to place the star on top of the tree. We looked through all of our boxes and finally found it. Mario begged to put it on and Ri agreed, as always. She got to take the picture and tape a video of it though so she was happy.

Simple pleasures.