Christmas Decorations

In preparing for the Home School Christmas activity at our house, Mom put up more Christmas decorations.
Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and a fire is lit to singe Santa's hair.

Many of the women coming to the home school Christmas activity a few days ago had heard about Mom’s nativity sets and had asked if she would have them available to see, so Mom set some of them up in displays. They look really good, so I thought I should take a few photos and post them.

I also shot close ups of several of the sets, but I did not want to post all of those here. I will include one clos up of one of my favorites:

Next to most of the nativity sets are signs that read "from Italy" or Germany, Peru, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Spain, Jerusalem, Holland, etc indicating where they came from.

This one is labeled "from Uncle Mark"

Christmas Tree

On Saturday, we got a Christmas tree. This first photo is Joseph holding the tree up on our deck. You would think it was cold the way he is holding it.

Once in the house, we put lights (400) and ornaments on it. Not all of the ornaments are on yet so it looks like we do not have enough on the lower portion of the tree.
This is what it looks like with the lights on in the room and using the flash on the camera.

This is what it looks like with the lights off and without the flash. The only light is from the 400 little lights on the tree.

I also took some close up shots without the flash of two of my favorite ornaments.

Mom got a new ornament this year of Captain Kirk and the Tribbles. This is photo of it.

When the button is pushed, tribbles fall from the overhead hatch and Captain Kirk speaks three different excerpts from the TV show. I recorded all three quotes, but the macro focusing ability of the camera does not seem to work in video mode.