Not one of ‘those’ Christmas trees

With the additional space in our schedule this Thanksgiving, we decided to go out the Friday afterwards and purchase our Christmas tree and put up the holiday decorations.

I KNOW!

Amazing, right? This from the family that used to forego putting up Christmas decorations because we were traveling for the holidays, and would be flying out as soon as we were off work. This from the family that scheduled an induction of birth (Thing 1) and calmly came home, put away all the decorations, and went to the hospital.

You mean we’re going to have a tree up for an entire month?!?!

Yep.

There are a few hard and fast rules in our house (mostly enforced by me). Rule 1, Thing 2’s birthday must be an event independent of Thanksgiving. Rule 2, no Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. Rule 3, all Christmas decorations must be down before Thing 1’s birthday. All in all, I think we’re on track.

Now, to the title of this posting… I don’t have one of ‘those’ Christmas trees. You know, the perfectly themed, fell out of a Martha magazine, color coordinated, picturesque representation of all that is perfect in Christmas tree-dom. Ours has white lights, a start that was given to us, and a hodge-podge of ornaments, each of which carry a story, and none of which match. My parents had this same type of tree for us growing up, and all of my Christmas memories are crystallized into those ornaments. And when I moved into my own house, my mom gave me my ornaments. Someday, when my sons move into their own homes, they will receive boxes of their own ornaments from across the years.

It’s very cool.

So now the process of decorating the tree is a storytelling event of the lives of myself, my husband, and my children. My favorites this year were to explain to Thing 1 three sets of ornaments.

Set 1: Mom & Dad
Set 2: Mom, Dad, & Baby’s First Christmas
Set 3: Mom, Dad, Thing 1, Thing 2

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!
~Me