Decorating Our Christmas Tree

We went to the local farmer's market yesterday to get a Christmas tree. It's amazing how fresh the trees are here. Of course, the one we bought only had to travel 2 hours south from where it grew up. Scott and I were looking at all the trees in amazement because all of them looked better than the best trees we saw in Phoenix and Texas. It was a blustery afternoon when we arrived at the market. Snow clouds were looming in the distance. I actually haven't seen enough 'snow clouds' to determine what they look like, but that's what the man who sold us our tree said they were. Ether way, it was COLD! Even though we were all freezing, it still took us awhile to select a tree. We finally chose one. Scott thinks it's a little skinny and I think it leans a little to the right, but it's still a beautiful tree.

We have always had white or blue and white lights on our Christmas tree because Scott didn't want colored lights. He has led me to believe that that is what he's always grown up with. I, on the other hand, grew up with multi-colored lights. Somehow, I always let Scott win this battle, until this year. We asked Payton what she wanted, and she chose multi-colored lights :) The only problem with this choice was that we didn't have enough multi-colored lights to cover the tree, so Scott went to Wal Mart after supper to get some. I gave the kids a bath, and we all waited in anticipation for Scott to get back. Of course, when you are the ones waiting it always seems longer than it actually is. While we were waiting, Payton sounded like a broken record, 'Can we hang the ornaments now? I want to put the ornaments on the tree!' I tried to stall the children by taking out some of our Christmas decorations, which helped a little. But then all they wanted to do was play with the decorations like toys. I was saying 'No!' right and left trying to control an out of control situation and antsy children. Unfortunately, we had one ornamental casualty :( and one frazzled Mom.

Finally, Daddy gets back from Wal Mart with the lights. We only had one strand of 100-count lights and he bought two more strands of....50-count lights. He said, 'They cover 12 feet! That should be enough, right?' I didn't say anything. He started to wrap the first strand of 50-count lights around the tree and it went once around. Scott looked dumbfounded. I told him it's OK. It's been a long time since we've used the formula for perimeter. He just shook his head. Mind you, by this time it was the kids' bedtime, and they were yelling and crawling the walls. We gave up on decorating the tree and put the kids to bed.

Now when I went into decorating the tree this year, I had envisioned a fun, sentimental night like the one my brother described in his blog. He and his family decorated their Christmas tree a couple of nights ago and Kevin paints a Normal Rockwell picture of the night. Somehow ours was quite the opposite.

We decorated the tree tonight, and it still wasn't picture perfect. There are too many ornaments on the bottom and particularly the bottom right of the tree (that's where Payton put all of her ornaments). And Ian didn't hang half the ornaments we gave him. I think most of them ended up on the floor. But, as with life, nothing is perfect. And honestly, things that are perfect are not always the most interesting, fun, or rewarding.