A little less nakedness.

Our poor Christmas tree has been naked far too long. I bought it almost 2 weeks ago, but we just haven't been able to get our acts together long enough to get it in the house, upright, and decorated.

Actually, that's not true. I got it in the house and fought with it and got it upright last week. And then it crashed.

No, it got pushed. Of course it was an "accident" but regardless I didn't have time to mess with it again and so I just leaned it up against the wall and left it there until I had time again.

Yesterday I started working on getting it back up straight. Things just didn't work out as well as I had hoped (at least partially because of 5 little attitudes) and I ended up sending a rather panicked message to The Dude to come over and help me. So we finally got it back up......but we won't talk about how much fishing line is being used to hold it in position.

"Upright" is all that counts, right? Right.

Anyway, we started decorating it tonight. We got an exceptionally late start on it and rushed through it, but I wanted all of the kids to be able to help. Of course there's always the one who refuses.....*smiles through gritted teeth*....but still.....

I like a lot of lights - and I start by wrapping the
first strand around the trunk.

Not as many lights as I wanted, but it'll do.

Hanging the first ornaments.

Very focused on the job.

I swear....I hate this worse than tangled lights.

Finished for now.....but not complete yet.

I still have to rearrange a lot of the ornaments, add a bunch more, and add the tinsel before it's done. But this is how far we got with it tonight before I sent the thundering herd to bed.

Yes, we have a lot of ornaments. Someone *cough* got this brilliant idea when the kids were babies - and the idea was to get each kid a couple of ornaments every year for Christmas. We use a Sharpie and write their names and the year on each ornament, and then they're wrapped and put in their stockings. It's a fairly inexpensive stocking stuffer, and they get to accumulate ornaments that they can take with them when they move out of the house. Well, some years - the ornaments went on sale before Christmas, and so they were really inexpensive, and *cough* someone *cough* might have gone a little crazy and bought maybe 4-5 ornaments for each kid, without doing the math and realizing that purchasing that many would add up to 20-25 new ornaments each year. *cough*

Yeah....so.....we have a lot of ornaments. And that's why we usually get a 9' tall tree - but we went smaller this year.

Along with the tree, I figured that I'd get the rest of the decorations up too - and that can be a pain when someone is vertically challenged.

Do as I say, not as I do. But take pictures of me while I'm doing it.

This is where the stockings get hung too - once I find them.

That's as far as we've gotten. But it's progress at this point. My tooth is still killing me (especially after I got desperate and ate solid food tonight and got a piece of chicken stuck in it) and I'm down to something like 35 hours before it gets pulled. Yes, the one with the phobia of dentists is counting down the hours until this thing is ripped out of my head - that's how bad it is.

It's been a crazy busy weekend. We had basketball yesterday of course, and Jared's Christmas program was Friday night, and it was super intense and emotional. One of his classmates is dealing with a brain tumor and they had him on Skype during the program, and they sang to him and waved to him and it was beautiful and touching and gut-wrenching and the tears were flowing. But, he got to come home on Saturday and was able to attend a chili feed that was held as a fundraiser for him and his family - so Jared got to see him and talk to him for a few minutes, which was wonderful. Seriously, for all of the whining that I've been doing about my tooth, seeing this little boy putting on his game face and fighting for his life just makes everything else seem so trivial. I got to visit with his mother for a little while, and she was amazing - I can't even being to imagine how I would feel if I were in her position.

Don't take it for granted. That's all I can say.