'Oh Christmas Tree

Wesley helped me wrap all the gifts, and is soo excited about presents... getting them, and giving them.  After wrapping each one, he carried them and carefully placed them under the tree.  Thankfully, neither him nor Chase have been interested in touching the gifts now that they are all nicely sitting out in the open.  Wesley will sometimes tell me he is going to go look at the tree, or look at the presents.  He will sit in the front room, and just admire the tree and all the gifts he helped  wrap.  Most of them are for other family.  We are giving the boys some larger gifts this year, and they will only have one or two gifts to unwrap under the tree.  We are trying to emphasize that everyone gets one or two gifts, and how fun it is to give presents to other people.   They are each going to have one big present from Santa, and one big combined gift from Jason and myself, and one gift from each other, and little stocking gifts.  Normally, Christmas time can get stressful trying to get everyone's gifts, but I managed to get most of the shopping done by the first of the month, and we had all the wrapping done by the middle of the second week, so now we just get to enjoy the season and cross our fingers that we don't get sick! 

I tried to hang the colored lights in the window, but they all fell down the next morning.  Wesley was sad, so I strung them around our "Merry Christmas" sign, and over the bookshelf, and it adds some fun color!

There was no Photoshop or editing done to the next photos.   I was trying out some fun techniques with the camera, and I think it turned out pretty neat!  

The April Ghost of Christmas!  :-) 

I love the "sparkling lights" effect with the long shutter.