NATCHEZ — Between stacks of courtroom paperwork and records and the county’s budget, Circuit Clerk Eddie Walker and Adams County Administrator Cathy Walker hardly have time to prepare for Christmas.

But when The Dart found the couple outside of their Pecan Way residence on Saturday afternoon, the first phase of the family’s decorating was in full swing.

“This is probably the earliest we’ve done our Christmas decorating,” Cathy said. “We decorate as late as possible. Usually, we spend Thanksgiving in Little Rock with my family and this year we didn’t get to.”

While Cathy didn’t spend Thanksgiving with family, her brother, Donald Woodall, was out helping the couple with their holiday decorations.

Eddie and his brother-in-law were busy tackling the job of hanging LED icicle lights on the Walker’s roof.

“I’ve been busy untangling (the lights,)” Woodall said. “They just throw them in the (Walmart) bags.”

Cathy said things have changed over the years as she and Eddie’s sons, Andrew, 17, and Austin, 14, have grown up.

“At one point in our lives, we were a little more organized,” Cathy said.

The Walkers said their sons were out of town watching the Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State football game, and they wanted to skip out on the fun.

“They said to make sure (the house) was decorated when they got back,” Eddie said.

Cathy, however, did not see anything but the roof getting decorated for the day.

“Maybe we’ll get the tree put up tonight, but with no decorations,” she said.

Cathy said much of her inside decorations go up last minute partly due to her workload, but mostly because both she and her husband put things off until last minute.

“Eddie and I are both procrastinators, which is probably a bad thing for us both to be. We used to be better about it when the boys were younger and we knew what they wanted for Christmas.”

Cathy said with teenagers to buy for, Christmas has gotten more and more tricky to shop for, and sometimes items on her kids’ lists are surprising.

“We told them to make lists, but we haven’t seen any,” Cathy said. “Last year, Andrew’s list had a black Ford Explorer on it. As you can see, he didn’t get that one.”

Cathy said not only have her children changed over the years, but so have the family traditions.

One area she said she misses is having a real Christmas tree.

“We have an artificial tree,” she said. “ I’d always grown up with a real tree, but years ago, Eddie talked me into getting our first artificial one,” Cathy said. “But for the first few years of our marriage, we had a real one.”

After the lights are put up, the Christmas tree is finally decorated and yard ornaments can be see in the Walker’s yard, the family will hang their stockings by the chimney with care — the whole family.

“We hang stockings for everyone — including the animals,” Cathy said.