Sorry I dropped off, there.  I was busy bedazzling my house for Christmas.  It takes a lot of time to decorate my house, you know.  I’m sure it takes a lot of time to decorate your house, too, right?  We have too much stuff that needs to be put out, all kitchy and crazy, and over-cluttered.  Every year I say that I want to scale back and my little CC says “NO! You have to put up ALL of Christmas!”  I have thinned the herd quite a bit over the years though, truth be told.  There was more stuff than flat surfaces to place it on, so there have been some very lucky freecyclers over the years.  We have 8 boxes of Christmas ornaments (left) for the tree.  Big, plastic, holds-a-million type ornament boxes.  Seven of those boxes are put on the “main” Christmas tree in the living room, and one box full of well loved Shiny Bright ornaments is put on the feather tree in the dining room.  My husband calls me the ornament pusher because he thinks there’s enough on the main tree after like one box, and I force him to continue until we have put almost all of them on it.  He’s such a quitter.  We decorate that tree front and back, inside and out.  It always looks beautiful when it’s done, he just doesn’t appreciate my vision sufficiently.  He very rarely appreciates my vision sufficiently.  We also have a rather large and festive looking Christmas village that takes a million years to set up.  Fun.  Currently my husband is supposed to be un-boxing and laying out the village, and yet for some reason I smell smoke from the train set, so obviously he’s playing.  We really are one of those houses that should start setting up in early November, because by the time we’re done it’ll be time to start taking it all down again.

My son mentioned to me that some people (middle school friends people) don’t put any ornaments on their Christmas tree.  I’ve never in my life seen that, and couldn’t possibly imagine it, but I believe him.  I know that decorating is a pain and putting it away is even worse, but I don’t know that I could look at a tree with just lights on it.  Maybe someday I’ll be tired of all of this trouble, and that’ll be the route I take, but I doubt it.  There are so many memories attached to this stuff.  I would never get a laugh finding CC’s “Jesus set” unless I searched for the box with the nativity in it, and I wouldn’t reread all of the letters Santa has left for the kids over the years if we didn’t find the Santa boot in the last box way in the back rafter of the garage.  Not to mention pulling out the velvety santa statue from my childhood (one of the only surviving decorations), and the ornaments given to us by grandparents on both sides of the family.  Every year there’s lots of old, plenty of new, and all of it worth the effort.  Don’t even get me started thinking of the future grandkids who will fill the NINE stocking holders I have on the mantel ready and waiting.  Santa’s sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, so cute it would make you want to eat it up if I showed you.  Sue me, I’m a planner.