Trees

Jax and I have been busy transforming the house into a Christmas Wonderland. It all started on Thanksgiving. After our feast, I made everyone help me drag the decorations out of the storage room, and then I proceeded to put our 9-foot artificial tree together. Anh helped a little this year too. I guess, after 8 years of "supervising," he finally felt comfortable helping.

Technically, he did help with decorations our first Christmas together. That was the year we decided to go out on a farm and cut down our own live tree. And that, folks, is exactly why we have had an artificial tree every year since. What a mess! To make a long story short. I like a grand tree. That year, grand equaled a 14-foot tree in a house with 12-foot ceilings. We only discovered the extra 2 feet of height after nearly wedging the pleasantly plump tree in our front doorway. No more real trees for us.

Back to the present...After putting the tree together, I kind of lost my motivation. We'll blame the tryptophan in the turkey. The decorations went untouched until Saturday when I started decorating the tree. Jax wanted to help, but it was hard for him to do much because the tree is so big. That's when I had a grand idea.

Last year, I bought a small 5-foot tree during an after Christmas clearance sale. I didn't need it, but it was only $5. My original thought was that we'd use it this year in Anh's office, but then it occurred to me that we could use it as a 2nd tree for the boys to decorate each year. Anh thought it was a great idea until we found ourselves at Target last night letting Jax pick out his very own decorations. That $5 tree ended up costing over $100 to decorate, and I even steered Jax towards the cheap ornaments. Oh well. Just a little more effort on our part to save the economy.

Jax and I had a great time decorating the little tree today. It's pretty gawdy, to say the least. Jax didn't believe me when I told him that we didn't actually have to put every single ornament that came in his kit on the tree. He wanted to go all out! It does look nice in a very flamboyant kind of way. As we were decorating, Jax kept referring to the tree as his, and I would correct him each time by saying that it was his and Baylor's. Never once did Jax refer to it as anything but his though.

Jax wasn't being a complete scrooge, however. He very generously gave Baylor his hand-me-down tree from last year. So thoughtful! At least, Baylor didn't seem to mind. It was new to him.