Our Foster Family Christmas || Tree Decorating

Last night we decorated our Christmas tree as a family.

I’m not sure if you remember, but last January is when we started foster care classes, and one year ago is when we made the decision to go ahead and become foster parents. Jason and I had talked about being foster parents in our first date– it was always part of the plan. Doing it this early though was a direct result of our struggle with infertility. We always planned on having our own kids first and then when they got a little older we would begin fostering very young kids, raising the age as our own kids got older. Fostering before we had kids was never ever even thought about. When we went two years with no kids though we felt we were being led to start sooner. Why waste time when we have no kids anyway and there are kids out there who could need us now? That was our thought process, and I remember last Christmas saying that hopefully this Christmas there would be kids in our home, one way or another. God made that wish come true.

Decorating our Christmas tree is easily one of my favorite traditions every year. We go to the same lot every year, pick out a specific kind of tree and set it up the night before. White lights are a must, and though I’m not as precise as my dad always made me be growing up (we had to string each light to a specific branch. It took HOURS), I still weave the lights in and out of the tree to light the whole thing up. This year Cee held the lights behind me so I wouldn’t get tangled and we got it done in an easy 45 minutes. Steven Curtis Chapman’s old CD, “The Music of Christmas” is my absolutely-can’t-decorate-without-it-music-of-choice, and I continue my parents tradition of pizza and punch (made with 7-up and sherbert) for dinner while we decorate. Bee couldn’t believe I put ice cream in her soda, and Cee was singing along with the CD after the third round.

(Continued below. Sorry about the iPhone pictures…)