O Christmas Tree…

…or why you should hire a babysitter while you assemble your new Christmas tree! ;)

The tree we’ve had in our living room for the past 7 years is pretty bare looking.  It’s the one I bought for my apartment when I was single.  It cost a whopping $50, I think…and it looked it! 

Keith decided this year that we needed a nicer tree in our living room.  We bought one a few weeks ago, and it’s supposed to be the kind with fold-up branches for easy assembly and storage.  SUPPOSED to be.  I guess that’s only after you struggle through the first-time assembly. 

Now, I”m a firm believer in waiting until AFTER Thanksgiving to set up the tree.  One holiday at a time for me, thank you! :)  Normally, Keith is fine with that.  This year, he was let out of work early on the day before Thanksgiving.  With a little extra time on his hands, he decided to haul in the new tree and all of our decorations.  He emptied the contents of the tree box all over the floor, only to find out it wasn’t quite as simple as we expected.  In fact, it was a bit challenging…made even more so by two eager little helpers who were hauling branches off in all directions, stepping on branches and bending them, and getting into all of the ornament and decorations boxes…all while I was trying to make dinner.

Oh, the chaos!  We never did get the tree finished that night.  We worked on it again on Thanksgiving morning…with our little “helpers” being just as helpful as the night before.  We decorated it on the day after Thanksgiving…and by this point, you’d think it would be easy.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough lights for the tree…trip #1 to town.  Then there wasn’t enough garland for the tree, and we still needed one more string of lights…trip #2 to town.  We couldn’t find the ornament hooks that we’d purchased last year, resulting in Keith repurposing a whole bunch of paperclips.  By this point, many of our ornaments had been broken by eager, excited little helpers.  By this point, both adults in the house were REALLY trying to keep our crabbiness to ourselves so we didn’t ruin the kids’ fun.

CRAZINESS!  I told Keith that, if it wasn’t for the joy of children, I’d probably hire of babysitter next time we assembled the tree!  I never realized it would be so difficult to decorate a tree with little ones.  There’s hope, though…next year, we’ll know how to assemble the tree correctly.  Next year, we’ll leave all ornaments in storage until we’re ready to put them on the tree.  Next year, we’ll wait until after Thanksgiving, too! 

I waited until the tree was fully assembled to take any pictures.  That way, we were all smiling in the pictures.

   

All’s well that ends well, though ~ Now that the tree is decorated and finished, it really does look pretty.  The boys are doing a pretty good job of leaving the ornaments on the tree.  They LOVE getting to push the button on the power strip to light up the tree each afternoon.  They’re excited about the Christmas Surprise bag under the tree, with a book, activity, or dollar store item for each day.  We’re making some fun memories, and I love that the boys are so excited for Christmas to come!