Christmas Trees and other decorations

The first tree I got to help decorate was my parents tree when we were there for Thanksgiving. You can see pictures in my previous blog post.
This is the second tree I had the privilege of helping decorate, I belongs to my youngest daughter and family. It is decorated the old fashioned way with popcorn, cranberry's and clay ornaments. It sure turned out beautiful. I am looking forward to seeing our oldest daughters family Christmas tree and decorations as we visit them for Christmas.

This is our tree that has been similar for the past 3 years except for the Christmas train under the tree. I love the pre-lite, artificial tree, It is way easy and especially when one travels over Christmas so we don't have to take it down early. We always leave our tree up until January 6 or longer. That is Epiphany.

A close up of our lite Christmas tree and just a few of our special ornaments.

Below is our Advent wreath. We have had and used one since our children were little girls. We light the candles on the appropriate week during our devotions. Tomorrow we will light the pink, the JOY candle. The first two weeks were the HOPE candle and the LOVE candle. The week previous to Christmas is the PEACE Candle. The white Candle is the Jesus candle for Christmas day!

Two pictures from the Zion school preschool and kindergarten program.

Here are the doors that we enter into our church. I really like the decorations this year.

The two trees in front of the church are decorated so nice. I love the big words
declaring Christmas messages.

The decorations as we enter the worship area.

These two banners hang on the west wall of the worship area.
The banner below is in the entry when we first come in the door.

Most years we have had a huge tall live tree from the Black Hills forest cut and placed in the Narthex but this year in place of the tree, the windows overlooking the city are decorated with swags, stick-on's and wreaths. It looks very nice and leaves plenty of room to use the spacious area.

I hope you are enjoying Christmas and the many meaningful decorations that go with it.