O, Christmas Tree

Every year (for the past three) we have made it a Christmas (or, Thanksgiving really) tradition to go buy our Christmas tree the day before Thanksgiving. I can hardly stand it as all the little tree stands start popping up in various parking lots and if I were able to maneuver a tree by myself with babe in tow, you better believe I'd have it home and ready for decorating by the time Evan was off work.

But it doesn't happen that way and instead we make it a little family tradition to go and to pick out thee perfect tree and it usually takes us forever because we're picky and I'm needy and why on earth are there so many trees with gaping holes instead of branches?

But we do find it, rather miraculously, and haul our beauty home and screw her into the red steel stand that we found in our basement and was probably the only thing of actual worth that the previous owner left behind. And it sits in our living room, this beautifully lit and decorated tree and every afternoon as it begins to grow dark outside, I turn on the lights and Maddox says, "Woah!" like it's the very first time he's seen me turn them on and then we sit and stare at it for a moment and then I ask him for the 100th time that day to please not pull the ornaments off of the tree.

So. Here it is. Our beautiful tree. It's a little bare this year because I hauled all of the Christmas decoration boxes upstairs and Maddox promptly opened them all and screamed at the top of his lungs, "BALL!" as if I had been hiding boxes of balls from him for his whole life. He grabbed the first one he could, the brightest red one caught his eye and he immediately smashed it on the ground. And so, our tree this year is full of shatterproof balls and lights and some plush ornaments that I'm currently trying to collect more of. There is not one breakable thing on this tree and my child has already lost most of the hooks to most of the ornaments and so he ever-so-graciously and gently sets the "balls" back onto the tree and so instead of hanging, most of our ornaments are sitting. It's fine, really. He makes things exciting and he's cute and so he could probably get away with anything.

I'm also working on adding more faux snow globes to my collection. Pinterest is full of the cutest ideas for them and I can't wait to make more. When I got all of my decorations out and in their little homes for the year, Evan said, "Is that it?" And so clearly we do not have enough Christmas decorations and I need to make more. On it, babe. I'm on it.