Deck the halls with boughs of holly...

It's December 1. Time to decorate for Christmas! We ran to get a tree late this afternoon and then spent the evening decorating. I've noticed a trend toward having "themed" trees, whether by using only certain colors to decorate the tree or by using only Santa ornaments, etc. I might like to try that sometime. Oh, who am I kidding. I love, love, love my Christmas tree. And I do consider it my Christmas tree. I have exactly five "filler" ornaments--the classic red, round ball ornaments--and the rest are historically precious to me in some way. Many of my ornaments are photo ornaments. I have one for Katie and one for Will for each year of their lives, and it's so funny to me to hear them ooh and ahh over how darling-precious they looked when they were "little" (a.k.a. 2 years ago.) I even have a cheapie cardboard photo ornament that attaches to the tree by a green rubber band from when I was in preschool. Will & Katie think that one's a riot. I have the requisite military-family ornaments from every place we've lived: a chile ristra from Albuquerque, a "Mele Kalikimaka" hibiscus from Honolulu, etc.

I did a couple of things this year that I've never done before. One of our strings of lights wasn't working, so Scott, Will and Katie went to get new lights. (The lights have to go on first. That's very important to the Overall Look.) When they came back, they had gotten multicolored lights. It didn't even occur to me to tell them to get white lights. We've always had white lights. White, non-blinking lights. The brightness of the multicolored lights clashes with the cranberry red of my garland. (The garland goes on second. Again, this is very important to the Overall Look.) So, okay, this year we have colored lights and no garland. Realizing that this tree is not going to have my preferred Overall Look, I decided to go with the flow. I just sat down and observed as Will and Katie hung the ornaments. It was surprisingly satisfying to watch them fill the tree--not at all the way that I would have done it, with bigger ornaments at the bottom, smaller ornaments at the top, etc.--but they exclaimed and reminisced over each ornament, and they did it with great joy, so I can honestly say that they did it right.