Trim the Tree

Believe it or not, we have actually had our tree up for a little while now. It's just taking me a long time to get the blog updated (thanks in part, to a certain series of vampire books that I finally decided I needed to read -- yeah, couldn't have picked a busier time of year for that!)

It was a little tricky finding a spot for the tree in our new house, but we found one that seems to work okay with a little furniture rearrangement. The kids always love decorating the tree. We have one of those "kid-friendly" trees with all the handmade, school-project, non-matching ornaments. I love it!

We did have a slight problem this year with a middle section of lights not working. What's the point of a pre-lit tree if the lights won't work? Brian couldn't figure out what the problem was, so we ended up just stringing on a regular strand over that section. Kind of a pain, but hopefully it's not too noticeable. (We also ended up with some missing piece for the base that holds the tree up straight, so I had to improvise that with some piece of cardboard.)

Last year, I decided to start an ornament tradition in the kids that I heard about. Each year, I pick out a special ornament for each of them. At some point when they leave home, they will get to take the box of "their" ornaments with them. We started late last year, so they didn't get their ornaments until Christmas Eve. This year, I was prepared and had them for the tree-decorating night.

McKay got a "Cowboy Santa" ornament (you can pull on the string to make his arms and legs go up and down).

Courtney got an angel doll:

Hayley got a sparkly girl and puppy on a sled:

And then there's Hannah. I was a little worried about Hannah's ornament this year -- wanted to make sure I picked out the right one for her. Fortunately, she was quite happy with her snowman sled:

The reason for my worry was what happened last year (some of you might remember this). I was excited to start this tradition and spent quite a bit of time choosing their ornaments. I picked out some musical notes for Hannah, because she had recently started piano lessons and was doing really well with them, and also because she loves to sing and is the best singer of all the kids. I thought she would be thrilled with it. Boy, was I wrong. When I gave it to her, she burst into tears (this was on Christmas Eve, remember). For whatever reason (that I still don't understand), she just really did not like it. I took a picture of each kid with their ornament, and this was Hannah's:

She would hardly even hold it. (Oh, the drama in Hannah's life!) The rest of Christmas Eve, she was still teary-eyed and upset. (On a positive note, this year she told me that she was finally okay now with that ornament.)