We put up our tree this afternoon. We made sure Penny was sleeping and then we went to work. I kept smiling and reminded myself and Gary that the process is more important than the product. 75% of the ornaments were on the bottom half of the tree and there were many branches that held more than one, and in one particular case--four ornaments. Love them. Simon even insisted that he put up at 5x7 picture of himself on the tree. He poked holes in the picture and shoved branches through them. Process Shanda. It is about the process and not about a huge picture of Simon hanging on the tree. I patiently (mostly) moved some of the ornaments to higher ground and to their own branches. It does make me happy that they remember the stories of the ornaments--"This one is from Grandma Karen" "I made this in pre-school" and the like. Isn't that one of the purposes of Christmas? To share our stories? To re-tell the story of God keeping His promise and sending His son?
We also made cookies and each kid promptly lost one of the cookies for bad behavior. Yeah-we are awesome. We have a ceramic tree up that Grandma Arlene made. She died this fall, so it is especially awesome to have it. The nativity is up and my favorite angel--the one that makes me cry every time I take it out of the box--has a new spot. She is standing on top of the stable rock! We'll do our kid hand prints another night. The Christmas Pickle wouldn't sing because the batteries were dead. Gary was all over it and some on on their way from our friends at Amazon. As I write this I'm realizing that I'll need to take a few pics. Ya'll need to see it.
There is one problem, besides Penny shouting at all the balls on the tree and taking down the stockings. The lights. We put new lights on the tree and I don't like them. They are crazy bright! I feel like I'm sitting by a neon sign. I don't feel like taking it all down tonight, but tomorrow night I'm going to take everything off and then put it all back on again. I don't think I'll ask for help from the kids.
1 comment:
I think I'll wait another year to let Tillie help decorate the tree. She does come with us to cut it down -- that's still the process, right?
Do you have LED lights? I bought them last year after Christmas on clearance for this year. I hope I don't regret that.
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