Trimming the Tree

Yes, I know it's a little late. In fact, I am actually adding these pictures on January 4th, 2009. Oops. But, better late than never. :)

With Tyler working so much, relying on him to bring the Christmas Tree up from the basement was proving to be a LONG wait. I had a feeling it would be Christmas Eve before the tree came up. So, one night I made up my mind and I brought it up myself. OUCH! Man, that thing is heavy for one person to bring up the stairs. It fought me all the way, and Blake helped me up the last bit of stairs where it gets a bit narrow to maneuver. The kids were very excited to see the tree, but it had to wait several more days for me to get the lights out of the basement. I HATE putting up the lights. I always think of that parody of "The 12 Days of Christmas" with the line "hanging up the lights!" about the 12 not-so-great things about Christmas. LOL.

Anyway, I brought up all of the lights on the 18th of December, only to discover that my light strands were all half-working. *SIGH* So, with the kids wound up out of their minds and Tyler left behind with them (hee hee hee), I went to Shopko to get lights. And they were out. So, I bought a few other things (of course) and then went to Wal-Mart where I bought three sets of 200 light strands. Hey, what can I say? I think my mom said she usually put 700 lights on this tree, so I figured 600 should suffice. To make a long story shorter, we only ended up putting 400 lights on the tree ... Tyler helped me and made it much more bearable ... we played jump rope over the top of the tree as we wound the lights around the tree ... and the kids were in bed before it was finished. LOL

So, we put ornaments on a different night, which is what you see here. *PHEW!* If you read all of my blabbering, I applaud you ... and apologize because I know it is probably similar to your own light-stringing story. :)

Blake wanted to put the ornaments on the top of the tree ... he used the step ladder.


Julia wanted to put all of her favorite ornaments next to each other ... I bet so they could have a conversation! ROFLMBO!


And every child of mine has fallen for the lollypop ornament ... this was Chase's turn:


Thanks for looking! :)