Decorating The Tree! May All Your Ornaments Have Hooks!

Our family tree is finally decorated this year and it only took three tries. With adult age children and married ones as well, getting together is proving a little difficult now-a-days. But we managed to find time last Tuesday around 8:30 pm to trim the tree.

This would be Mark and Jesse helping to decorate the tree. (Pardon my yarn explosion in the background)

They were a big help.

Our family tree has looked different over the years but I think we have finally settled on a theme. And that theme is cover the tree with so many ornaments you can't see the branches. The last few years, we've put every single ornament we've ever been given, bought, won or stolen on the tree. Yeah, that's right, stolen. (not really, we've never stolen our ornaments, I just thought that would sound "street" and I've always wanted to sound "street")

I'm glad we finally settled on the over-loaded ornament tree because I've spent years trying different decorations on our family tree, and quite frankly, it's exhausting.

Here a few of our ornaments. That's a grizzly bear with a salmon in his mouth, nestled close to a Santa Claus ornament from Aunt Chris. The grizzly was Kaitlin's contribution to the tree when she was away at college. She brought all her dirty laundry and the grizzly bear ornament home for Christmas break her freshman year.

Over the years, we've had multi-colored lights, all white lights, all red lights, all blue lights, twinkle lights, bubble lights and big glass bulbs that left blisters when you accidentally touched them. That was a fun year.

One year I spent two days stringing real popcorn and cranberries with a yarn needle and thread. And then the cranberries went bad and we had to keep spraying the tree with Lysol because it smelled weird.

We've had glitter garland, beaded garland, no garland...silver tinsel, and tinsel so long the girls wore it around the house as a wig. And then there was the year we discovered our cat liked to eat tinsel (trust me, you don't want to know...but that was the last year we had tinsel in the house). You name it, we've probably decorated with it...although we did throw the cat tinsel in the trash.

Now our family tree is mostly our tree is decorated with ornaments the kids have made at school and church, ones with their names and the year on them, the special ones from family and friends.

Yes, we have a hula girl on our family tree. We also had one on the dashboard of our minivan named Lola for many years until she tragically fell off. A very sad day indeed.

The topper for our family tree has changed only a couple of times over the years. Mark and I bought an angel the first year we were married and we used her for many years. But then her bulb blew out and I couldn't figure out how to change it so I retired her to one of the storage boxes and bought a new star.

And everyone hates it.

Every year we finish up decorating and I always, without fail, have to ask, "Is someone going to put the star on top of tree?" And that's when the complaining begins.

"Do we have to put that thing on the top of tree?"
"That is the ugliest star I've ever seen."
"When are we going to get something else to put up there?"

This usually last a good 5 minutes before I start to get mad and then just before the evening is ruined by me yelling at everyone to "Knock! It! Off!", Mark awakens from his tree-trimming nap and intervenes.

By sticking the star on the too-tall top of the tree. And leaving it there until New Year's.

I call these our Christmas star mug shots.

Happy Tree Trimming! May all your empty ornament boxes fit just right!

The Tree

Used to be, when I was a much younger women, we had no less than 6 decorated trees in our house. One year we had 8 trees and I put them all up in a tree-decorating frenzy that lasted 3 days. That was also the week I left one of the kids in the church nursery and didn't realize she wasn't in the car until I pulled into the driveway at home.

I was a little distracted with visions of Christmas trees dancing in my head.

I used to put a tree in each of the kids bedrooms, in the living room, in the sun room, in the kitchen...every where I could stick one, I did. And each one had it's own theme. Plus I used to try something new each year with our main family tree although it never seemed to work out...

I tried the all snowman tree but I couldn't keep it from melting and shorting out the lights...the all-one-color tree but the Grinch green tree I put up made everyone nauseous...the skinny tree but I resented it...the upside down tree but every time I went into the family room, I felt the need to walk scrunched over with my arms out for balance.

(Da-Dum-Dum...applause, applause...
"Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week!")

We've had live trees and artificial ones too. We've bought them at grocery stores and in parking lots. We've cut them down at Christmas tree farms and once inherited a 1960's model from Mark's parents. We've gotten a few half off on the day after Christmas sale and we've had one that cost more than my present to Mark that particular year. (I didn't hear the guy in the flannel hat with the toothpick in his mouth correctly...I thought he said $65, not $25...and he apparently thought the extra $40 I handed him was a tip).

This year I lost the battle between getting another live tree or buying a fancy pre-lit tree. We've had a live one the last few years but after hearing the kiddos gripe about having to put lights on the tree for the umpteenth time, I caved and sent Hayden off on the blackest of days to buy one on sale. A Martha Stewart tree no less. Fancy-schmancy.

I'm actually looking forward to having an artificial tree this year because we always seem to have problems when we have a live tree. There always seems to be some leaning involved. We usually have the tree pretty straight starting off, but as the weeks roll by, the leaning becomes more and more pronounce. Except last year, we started out leaning.

Here the menfolk are, trying to fix last year's leaning problem.

And the fact that after the first week we never water it again probably has something to do with the leaning as well. That's always been Hayden's job, to water the tree.

Thankfully that hasn't been his job when it comes to our pets.

So our ONE new Christmas tree has been purchased, assembled and is currently residing upright in our sun room. It's waiting to be decorated this evening with some special ornaments from years past and a few new ones, including this little gem I got in the mail just today.

It's an ornament from the restaurant my baby brother is obsessed with, he goes there everyday for coffee.

We'll put it next to our Dunkin' Donuts ornament.

The Blackest of Days

So I don't do Black Friday. Never. Ever.

Okay, once.

A couple of years ago I wanted a laptop and I guess I wanted it so badly that I temporarily lost my senses. But in the midst of my lack of clear thinking I did have one moment of clarity. I was determined that I was not going to go in the middle of night and stand in line for it. Sights like this kept playing over and over in my head...

So I did the next best thing. I asked my husband to go in the middle of the night and stand in line for it. I even offered to make him a thermos of coffee to take with him.

He didn't bite.

I had to go myself but I dug my heels in about going out that night. I had until 11:00 am the next day to get the deal on the laptop so I figured I'd wait. Surely there would be some laptops left. I mean come on, the store is going to stock enough for everyone, right?

Apparently that's not how it works on Black Friday. When I pulled into the parking lot, it looked like a deserted street in a ghost town. Deadly quiet...empty plastic shopping bags rolling around like tumble weeds...a slight humming noise coming from the flickering neon store sign...and the only person in the parking lot was a slightly dazed shopping cart guy, listlessly pushing a mile long line of carts back towards the store.

I started looking around, half expecting to see Clint Eastwood riding through the parking lot at any minute, cigarillo clamped between his teeth with some weird whistling music playing.

"Did they close the store?" I thought to myself. "No, there's the gal ringing the bell at the red kettle. They have to be open."

I walked inside and grabbed a cart (I didn't want to disturb the shopping cart guy, he seemed to get a little agitated the closer he got to the front door of the store). And then I started off to the electronics department. And to my utter shock, the laptop I wanted was sold out. There I stood, looking from shelf to shelf, mouth wide open, muttering to myself, "They're all gone? How can that be?"

Then a sales clerk suddenly appeared out of nowhere, as if an angel. As she glided by me, she said, "Honey, those things were gone in the first 43 seconds." And then as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone. (I later saw her at the snack bar)

So I slowly turned my cart around and headed toward the exit. Defeated, I thought, "Well, I guess I wasn't meant to have that laptop." I made my way through the store, got sidetracked in the yarn department, bought an Icee and headed home.

And as I told my family the story of shopping among the ruins, the sad tale of shopping cart guy, the account of the angelic sales clerk, and the ultimate loss of the new laptop, Taryn said, "Why don't you just go online?"

Ted the UPS guy delivered it to the house the next Tuesday.

The Christmas Newsletter

Every year I make plans to write a Christmas newsletter. I look at festive letterhead. I think about a pretty font to use. I make a mental list of who to send the newsletter too. I get my cup of hot chocolate and laptop ready and sit down to start our first Christmas family newsletter.

And that's usually when someone walks into the room and hands me the mail.

Over the years we've received lots and lots of Christmas newsletters with wonderful news about weddings, babies, school graduations and the like. And those milestones in life are meant to be shared.

It's the other stuff that I'm talking about in Christmas newsletters. *whispering* thebraggingstuff

And I know me. I know that if I started a Christmas newsletter after reading what comes to our house every year, I would be very tempted to ssssttttrrrrrreeeettttcccchhhh the news from our house.

Hayden wouldn't have a part in the senior play, he'd have the lead.
Taryn wouldn't be volunteering at the nursing home, she'd running the home.
Kaitlin wouldn't be playing a solo at church, she'd be conducting.

Stuff like that.

So that's not what this Christmas newsletter is about. It's what happens around our house during the holidays.

Things like what our family does to prepare for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. How we celebrate, where we go to look at Christmas lights, how many times I'll hear the following..."who drank all the eggnog?" "he gave you that for Christmas?" "I can't believe they didn't send you a Christmas card!"

Precious, tender, heart-warming moments...hope you'll come back!