Christmas 2011 - Decorating at Grandma's

Who has time to get out a ladder?

Grandmas Great with all of her great grandkids!

We are breaking tradition this year - and it is a little painful as we are "tradition people". For the second time EVER Mr. Wiedz will not be attending the Christmas Eve party with his extended family. (The first time when we had just recently moved to California and couldn't spend the money on going back up to Oregon so soon.) But last year our children started saying how much they wanted to be home on Christmas morning. Who can argue with that? Last year we already had so many plans in motion that making that happen was impossible but this year, we'll be home.

But the J Party is over 2 hours away. And a drive up and back to it in one already packed and tradition-laden day just isn't what we want to do with five children. I don't want to get home at 1AM and finish up being ready for the morning. We've never attended a Christmas Eve service...we'd like to start that as a tradition.

So it makes sense to not attend the party...except for Grandma Great. Her health isn't great. She's our last Great Grandparent. What if... Mr. Wiedz and I were talking about it and I suggested him going up to visit her and he mentioned her asking his help getting her tree up. I said, "perfect! Go do that!". Slowly through this conversation this idea and plan got formed to go up to Grandma Great's as a family and decorate with her. Then it grew even more to include all of Mr. Wiedz's cousins and their families.

So we had a decorating day at Grandma Great's! And it was a blast. She was thrilled to have her Christmas stuff out (though wondering how she would manage to put it all away) and to have a family day! And we all got some Grandma time!