Raising of The 2005 Christmas Tree

Early this evening, the family piled in the car and headed to our favorite grocery store's parking lot to locate The 2005 Family Christmas Tree. We landed a beauty, and probably the thickest spruce we've ever had for Christmas (three men could barely pull her through the shoot to wrap her in netting for the ride home). This year we are trying something a bit different, and the tree is being displayed in our basement. After a very busy Thanksgiving, Ken and I seemed to both like the idea of being able to purchase a fatter tree, and only having to move all of our stored decorations from storage, 10 paces into the next room. Ken calls it our "Contained Christmas".

The children were chomping at the bit to decorate the tree while Dad worked systematically on stringing the lights. Dad's labored task was a bit too lengthy for their patience (maybe his too) so I took a risk and had the children be in charge of unwrapping all of our ornaments. They did very well with this exciting task, but they were quickly through, and Dad still had half the tree to light.

During my excavation for Christmas supplies, I had discovered a huge stash of childrens books I had stowed away in a plastic bin at least a year ago. This proved to be a treasure to be remembered. The children were glued to some of their long lost favorites until the time to decorate finally arrived.


Jack was an instant crack up with his decorating. Every ornament was placed in the exact same location. Unfortunately, after a good 20 minutes of pleasantries, it wasn't long before the children began hoarding the ornaments and scuffling over whose ornament was whose. Ah...the merry sounds of Christmas.

The tree is almost complete...a few more strings of beads and she'll be our bejeweled cheer for the season.