Santa's Little Helpers?

I do believe that Santa must have sent me his very special helpers! We are just zipping right along with the decorating! We are opening one storage box after another and getting out what we are going to use this year. Graham got through with his school work and headed over to see what he could help with. I decided that he was old enough to be given the job of setting up our Precious Moments manger scene. He did a great job. A picture of that will be forth coming sometime during the holidays. Today's photo shows Graham's major job of the day--the corner Christmas tree. Ever since we got the corner tree several years back, Graham has put it together for us. So he was ready to do "his" job once again today. We had to move quite a few boxes to get to the tree box, but we managed to do it. He got the tree box downstairs just prior to getting called home for lunch. He and Joy came back as soon as they finished eating and got to work. Graham put the stand together and the boards placed under the tree and assigned Joy the job of sorting the branches according to colors. Then it was together in no time and the three of us "fluffed" the branches. At some point Joy headed home and Esther came over and assisted Graham in placing the ornaments on the tree. So one Christmas tree up and decorated thanks to our very helpful grandchildren. Esther and I got all the ornament boxes back in the storage box. Then Graham and Esther helped me get underway with supper...they peeled the potatoes for the mashed potatoes that I planned for tonight's meal to go along with other leftovers from last night's pot roast dinner. Once again they proved so helpful! It was so nice for me to not have to peel potatoes when it came time to fix out dinner tonight! After supper, I was just about played out so came upstairs to rest...and, yes, this rest included resting my eyes. I just woke up a few minutes before it was time to blog. I'm not worth much in the evenings after doing so much during the day. I "should" head back to do a few more things, but just don't have the energy...nap or no nap! That's one reason that I start decorating early...I can go at it as slowly as I need to! But at this point I'm feeling very good about the decorating...there are just little touches here and there that need to be done...THEN we will attack our BIG Christmas tree and ALL its ornaments. Woody had a chiropractor appointment this morning. After that he did part of our weekly grocery shopping. He took a 4-mile-walk that included stopping at the pharmacy to pick up one of his prescriptions. He also ran another errand that took him to two places. So he has been quite busy today, too. His leg/knee/etc. continue to hurt him. He has been spending a lot of time icing his knee the last few days. Well, I'm off to rest and give into my aches and pains. I have a good book that I started yesterday...I'm sure that I hear it calling from the arm of my recliner! I almost forgot about Elijah's special help this afternoon. He wanted to do some more decorating when he came over. So while the potatoes cooked, we got Christmas bells out. It was so cute how he organized them. He asked me the same question about each bell..."Is it breakable?" He place them according to my answer...all the breakable ones he put in a line waaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back on the shelf and the ones that weren't breakable he placed in a line on the front of the shelf. He explained that was so Isaac couldn't get to the ones that were breakable! (Ummmmmmmmm...confession here...not sure that Grammy will leave them as he placed them but he had a very good reason for placing them as he did...wonder if I'll be sorry if I move them around a bit and bring those breakable ones a bit more forward on the shelf! So far Isaac has come over and only been interested in the Fisher Price manger scene! The children do enjoy that manger scene so much and each of them has their own idea as to how it should be displayed. It gets rearranged by each of them each time they are over. Joy arranges it differently than any of the others...she takes Baby Jesus out of the scene...since it isn't Christmas yet and He hasn't been born yet! What fun times we have ahead of us as we celebrate the real reason for Christmas!