Decorating our home

We only found out Tom would have today off from work for Veterans Day a few weeks ago.  And then we discussed several things to do today as a family, including going to a Veterans Day celebration.  But at the last minute we realized the one we wanted to go to was for real veterans (Tom served in the Navy, but he's not a veteran) so we ended up just staying home and cleaning the house...which really needed it since we were gone on cleaning day last week for our camping trip, and we'll probably be gone on cleaning day this week.

This morning Lukas asked again (only the second or third time this week) when we were going to put up Christmas lights, so Tom decided to do it today since the next few weekends we're busy and Natalie and Konrad's birthdays are right after Thanksgiving.  So the lights went up today (yes, you may applaud our earliness) but won't actually be lit until after Thanksgiving.

The big news was that this year Lukas did all of my job of putting the clips on the lights.  We were all so impressed.  Not only are there four different ways to put the clips on (which has been known to cause a slight bit of marital discord in past years when I didn't get the clips on the right direction...and then couldn't figure out how the way Tom wanted them on was different from the way I had just put on 30 clips) but there are a lot of clips!

Anyway, Lukas not only followed Tom's direction in putting the clips on correctly, but he stuck with the job until the end and didn't get distracted (which is a huge issue with him) by other interesting things going on around him.  Go Lukas!

Tom and Lukas snuck out during Konrad's morning nap, and when Konrad woke up, he and Natalie watched through the window for a while before we all went out and played while Tom and Lukas worked.  The "Happy Birthday" balloons are from visiting the party center for birthday supplies...some of their mylar birthday balloons are only $.99.