charlie brown has nothing on my kids

So in order to write or do things on the computer I usually need to distract my kids because they like to "sit" with me when I work, which never actually involves sitting. So today it was decorating the kids Christmas tree. If you asked me three years ago how many Christmas trees we have, I would scoff and tell you one, because who the hell has or needs more than that? Let's fast forward two years ago when my mom moved in with us. You see I come from compulsive decorating stock, and Christmas is like the Last Supper of decorating for individuals like that. Growing up we started with two trees, one kid tree and one pretty gold tree that we couldn't touch, ever, at all. When you would hang the ornaments my dad had a mantra - "the ornaments hang, they do not lay" and my favorite - "I hear clinking!" At the end of the season we would painstakingly take all the gold tinsel off the fancy tree and put it back into the shirt box from Penny's. You think I'm kidding, I am so not kidding. Then when we moved to the townhouse in Schererville, we maintained those trees and my brother got his own - he collected the Hallmark sports figures each year and had enough to support his own tree.

I guess at this point I should also tell you that Saint Nicholas comes to our house each year and delivers an new ornament in your shoes by the door. This is a spin off of the traditional St. Nick story where children would leave their shoes by the door for a special treat. My parents thought ornaments were the perfect thing, so I have been receiving an ornament in my shoe for thirty three years now - I now carry the tradition on with my own family and well you can do the math, we have a BOATLOAD of ornaments. But the best part is, we all remember getting them, when we got them and the kids love to run to their shoes the morning after to see what St. Nick brought them. Some people set their kids up with inheritances and such to start their lives, my kids may not have a pot to pee in, but they'll be able to decorate a killer tree when they graduate from college. So back to the trees -

After my brother and I moved out and mom was left to her own decorating she branched out into lots of little trees. By the time she moved to our home she was up to four in her three bedroom townhouse. Four. They were themed- in her room it matched her colors, burgundy and pink - angels and doilies, my old room had a doll inspired tree since that became her "doll" room where she displayed her antique dolls, then in Steve's room it became the kids tree - she decorated it with pictures of the kids, kid inspired ornaments, etc. Downstairs she had a tree in her dining room that matched her kitchen and dining space with wine, french toile and sparkly fruit. When mom moved here, we put up a tree in her room that was a hybrid of her bedroom, doll room and dining room ones. We then decided to put up a kid tree in the basement so we could hang ornaments mom had at her house and it would also provide and annex for our ever growing ornament collection.

So I still put up mom's hybrid tree, mostly to remember her by - it isn't much my taste, but it represents her and what she loved, and during this melancholy holiday season, I need all the happy reminders I can get my little hands around. We also have started putting up the kids tree so I had it shaped and the star on top and while I was writing my previous post my little darlings asked if they could decorate it. I said sure, why not? So this is what they did:

Drew explained that they couldn't reach that high, so they put them at all at the bottom, and that they ran out of room, so I'll need to do the rest, since I can reach higher. They did good, no? They are so proud of their work, I hardly have the heart to move anything they hung - I might not either mostly because my parents would never have let me do that to a tree let alone leave it- we'll see, I'm actually a bit concerned on the tree's structural stability, so I might have to move a few for fear of finding them all including the tree on the floor.

So now we have three, oh crap four - I bought a small 2 foot table top tree for my kitchen, instead of stashing candy in our advent calendar I stole my girlfriend Meg's idea and now put tiny ornaments that we hang each day. No sugar buzz before school and I'm not dipping into the 17th for my chocolate fix on the 5th. So now we have four - I'm one of those people now.

Thanks!