O' Christmas Tree

I am a huge fan of getting our Christmas tree early. For starters, I love the look, the smell, and the feeling of having a Christmas tree in my house. Another reason is that for some part of December- we always go up to visit my family so I like to have my tree up and ready to enjoy since we are gone for a good chunk of time visiting. For the last two years, we have gone to the kid's school Christmas tree lot to pick out our tree. The pricing has been really reasonable and the kid's school and classes benefit from our patronizing this particular tree lot! This year we wavered on whether to get a douglas fir or a noble. We always get a douglas fir but this year their nobles were so full that they looked like a douglas firs. In the end- we stayed with our usual tree choice. The person running the lot had some trees that were freshly delivered that day. We watched him cut open some of the trees and when he unwrapped the tree pictured- it was absolutely perfect. No bare spots, perfect height, and the smell was to die for! Done and done.

We brought it home, put it in it's stand and gave it some water but didn't decorate it until the next day. It was too late for the kiddos! When we woke up the next morning our house smelled sooooo good! This is our first Christmas in our newish house. We will have been here for a year towards the end of December. Being that we really don't have set places for all of our decorations- we had to visualize what would be best. We put the tree in our living room so that at night it can be seen through the front window. When I pull into the house at night and see the tree in the window it makes me so happy!

The kids had a great time decorating the tree. I think we only broke three glass balls and we managed to do a pretty good job of making our tree look really pretty. I love watching the kids pull the special ornaments out of the box. Claire's most favorite Nutcracker ornament, a little golden Eiffel Tower for Michael from the trip to Paris when he was born, a sweet white ornament with Matthew's red chubby hand print pressed into clay. This memorable and important ritual we do every year decorating the tree brings us all together and reminds us of the very special days in our past. As we prepare for the birth of Jesus, putting all the kid's First Christmas ornaments on the tree reminds me of their own births. This truly is a special time of year and I am again reminded of the most special blessings my family brings me.