Christmas time is nearly upon us again this year, and I think this year was the earliest we started preparations that I can remember.  It seemed to make sense, however, as Christmas trees were arriving over the last week or so at Sousa’s Landscaping, and as Jenn was heading for NYC for a girls shopping trip next weekend (read further blog post), we thought we’d get the tree up while they were available and Jenn was here.  So off we went.

Josh was very helpful in choosing the tree – in fact, he decided upon the tree that we went with.  Ryley happily tagged along, enjoying the breeze and the presumably the smell of the newly-cut trees.  Mmm… love that smell…!  With the decorations this year came Eddie the Elf, Santa’s man on the ground, keeping Josh (and Ryley) in line for the last push to stay on the ‘nice’ list for the month before Christmas.  It worked http://www.ryanjenn.comsomehttp://www.ryanjenn.com of the time…

The Christmas parade was on this weekend as well, which was also a boost of sorts to the Christmas spirit in the house.  I say ‘of sorts’ as it is more of a symbol of the coming holiday than anything else – at the risk of sounding old (yikes!), these Christmas parades are more often simply a venue for the local hip-hop dance studios to rent a truck and have someone’s boyfriend pretend to be a DJ, spinning horrible music at full volume while little girls gyrate (in a very non-Christmas like fashion) for a good two hours or so.  This year’s parade was admittedly a little toned down and more ‘Christmasy’, Josh didn’t have to sit there and cover his ears as much – overall, it was more enjoyable.

Christmas is sure to be a fun and busy time of year, as it always is for us – will be sure to post our usual ‘recap’ on our main website, so stay tuned…