OH! Christmas Tree!

Last weekend we drove by Walmart and they had Christmas trees!  I was wondering where we could get one down here, and while Walmart doesn't hold quite the same allure as, say, cutting down your own tree, I was excited to be getting one at all.  I pretended to consider not getting a tree this year, since we'll be away on Christmas.  But... who am I kidding?  A tree is mandatory.  We bought a smallish tree and headed home.  It seems that I have very little in the way of estimation skills.  I thought the tree would fit nicely next to our little table in the living room....  Well, I think the tree is about as wide as it is high, and it took up about half of the small room that we put it in!  I had some buyers remorse for a few minutes, I admit, but now that the tree is pushed up in a corner, it feels much smaller than it did initially and I love it.
It became all too clear that Amara is growing up, when I saw that she took it upon herself to redistribute the ornaments that Ethan packed into one small section of the tree. Unfortunately, she also needs to work on her discretion, because Ethan caught her repeatedly and was not impressed with her efforts.

Santa made an appearance the other night at our church Christmas party.  Ethan's request: a bigger Bionicle!  (He has two small ones.)  And Amara asked for a Giselle doll.  She's since widened the possibilities to include a Barbie car and a Barbie city (so her Barbies have somewhere to go.)  I always find Amara's gift requests so interesting.  She's been playing with Barbies occasionally, but not constantly, yet all her gift ideas revolve around Barbie.