Christmas Clean-Up

And a Merry Christmas it was for our family!!!  I hope everyone had a happy holiday season - we sure did.  Today is the day, however, that we take it all down.  {sniff...gasp...}  This part is always so hard for me because the Christmas break, the excitement, the spending time together, the celebration, all of it is so much fun and when we take the decor down, it means that the fun is officially over.  So to keep myself from lapsing into a post-Christmas depression, I'm looking ahead.

Is it weird that I'm already excited for Valentine's Day?!

Here's some of the decor that will all be destroyed today...  I didn't take a whole lot of pictures this year...I know, shame on me, but I'm so preoccupied with way too many things going on.

My tree this year....ahhhhh....

I wanted sort of a golden/sugar plum kind of thing going, and at night, that's exactly what I got.  It was gorgeous.  And then, slowly, it got un-decorated from the bottom up to where my little baby girl's arm reaches.  Thank goodness everything is plastic!  Glad I learned that lesson long ago...

And this is my little baby tree up in our window mantle area.  

(it's dark here...always cloudy...not much natural light...OY!)

zoomed out, a little crooked, and kinda dark... but you get the idea, right?!

It was all so magical.

Some Christmas whimsy.  

And my little elf 'helper' peeking out! And when I say 'helper', I mean 'destroyer.'

So now it's onward and upward.  January is not only the start of the new year, it's the start of my MOVE TO ARIZONA COUNTDOWN!!!  wahoo!!!!!  To say that we're excited is a severe understatement.  Not that we don't love it here in Michigan, we really do, but we're pretty much homesick for all things related to home.  Our families, Mexican food that will never be matched, outdoor activities all year long, the scenery, the scenery, and more scenery.  This year couldn't end fast enough for me....come on 2012!!

Happy New Year to all of you!!!