Me vs. The Tree

We bought our Christmas tree the other day, but it's been sitting out on the front porch in a bucket of water, waiting for the living room to be clean enough for it to fit somewhere. So today, while I was down to only one kid, I decided to at least get the tree inside the house.  Of course, that involved cleaning the living room, and pretty much completely rearranging anything that wasn't already bolted to the wall. Seriously, anything that's more than about 3' tall in this house is bolted to the wall because the entire house is...... wobbly. Plus, I have kids (in case you didn't know that). Actually some stuff that was bolted to the wall got moved too, now that I think about it.

Then it was time for battle. I have this really bad habit of buying really big trees - but with the amount of ornaments that we have, it's pretty much a necessity. And besides, I like big trees.

Doesn't look that big while it's just laying there...

Photography by Daniel....

The fight was on.

My head got eaten by a tree!

Still fighting....

And about an hour later...

No, I will not buy a fake tree. Yes, I understand that they are easier. Yes, I understand that they save money and natural resources and create much less of a mess to clean up after the holidays are over.

Know what? I don't care. I like real trees. I will always have a real tree. I've heard all of the arguments and I've even looked into buying a fake. But, no. I won't do it. Period. End of story.

Once I got the tree upright, I decided to go ahead and get the outside lights put up, since it was warm outside. Stupid weather.

How many moms does it take....

They're up - isn't that good enough?

Weird. My kid was outside playing in the leaves
without wearing a coat while I was hanging
Christmas lights.

Ghetto-tastic. Now if I can just get the second string of lights fixed,
I can do the same thing on the other porch too.

I'm going to attempt to get the lights put on the tree in the next day or so, but we won't be able to actually decorate it until at least Friday. The older 3 kids won't be back until Wednesday, but they have church. Thursday, we have basketball. So Friday is really the first chance that we have to do it as a family.

However, nothing's stopping me from going through the boxes of ornaments between now and then to *ahem* reduce the number of ornaments that the kids feel must go on the tree. Some of them are just downright ugly - but I keep them for sentimental reasons. Weird, I know. Don't judge.

For now, I just have a ton of cleaning and laundry to do (go figure) since I worked on the living room and the tree most of the day - and then I have to plan out my week. Too much to do, and too little time. As usual.