O Christmas Tree

This year I feel so off track for Christmas. We usually start putting up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving and have in all done in a day or two. And here we are a few days into December and I don't have everything up and I feel like I'm wasting precious Christmas time. Well today I was thrown even more off when Aaron showed up with a live tree. We have a beautiful pre-lit artificial tree, which I LOVE, but Aaron......not so much. We bought it about seven years ago when Kmart here in Sulphur was going out of business. It was originally over $200, but we paid $60 for it. It is full and beautiful, but because of it's age, it has a few issues. For instance, some of the branches at the top are broken, but I taped them up and it works, and you can't even tell. And then last year some of the lights on the bottom of the tree went out. I spent hours working on them, to no avail. But I am fine with just adding some string lights and calling it good because I just love the look of the tree so much. Aaron has been trying to find a new tree for the last few years, but I just don't want to pay the price to have a tree as beautiful and full as the one we have, especially when we can just make do for a little longer. We were over at the Cliffords on Monday and he got so excited about their real tree and I think that is when he decided that we needed a real tree too. So here he is, all proud of his real tree.



In my opinion, the only great thing about a real tree is that it smells up the house really nicely. But, we have found that Yankee makes a 'Mistletoe' candle that smells just as good, and makes you think your tree is real, without all of the headache of a real tree. I know lots of people will disagree with me, but I think there are so many more cons than pros to having a real tree. Here are the ones that really are bothersome to me:

1. Having to water it and try to keep it alive until Christmas. I have put Aaron in charge of this, since it was his idea, and because it is a little harder for me to get up and down these days.

2. Having to pay every year for a tree that is going to die. Makes no sense to me.

3. All of the needles EVERYWHERE!!!!!

4. It is not perfectly shaped like my artificial tree. Aaron says that's because it is REAL and REAL trees, like life, aren't perfect. I say--what's wrong with a little perfection? After all, isn't that what our ultimate goal is supposed to be?!

5. The branches are too weak to hold some of our heavy ornaments. Even the ones at the top won't hold them. They just keep falling down. It's very frustrating.

Having said all of that, I really am trying not to be a Scrooge about the real tree, especially for the girls sake. They really weren't too sure about it either to begin with, but once they got out of the bathtub tonight and saw the tree all lit up after I had shaped it and strung all the lights, they were very excited and immediately went to work putting on the ornaments, which has always been their job.



Posing by the tree.



They used to put all of the ornaments in the same spot on the bottom of the tree, but they have gotten better about spreading them out.



While they were decorating, Sarah kept saying, "Mom, this is the yummiest Christmas ever!" I guess the real tree is growing on her. Maybe it will me too. But really, these smiles are all that matter.