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.