Decorating Madness

This will be known as the Christmas that Daddy hurt his foot. Seth was working in the bathroom today and slipped in the tub while holding a piece of drywall. Something is protruding from his foot, but we are just trying to ignore that and enjoy the day. Except, his injury means that he's stuck on the sofa with his foot raised and I'm dragging the boxes out of the attic. I huffed my way out of the attic then down the stairs with 5 or 6 boxes and the artificial tree. I wondered the entire time WHY I've made my husband do this for 10 years. I'm also incredibly impressed with his stamina and the fact that he has never complained about decorating the tree. When we have to decorate the tree for a second and third time after it's fallen, he complains. The initial decoration is always welcome.

I toyed with the idea of leaving everything in the attic and just pretending that fall decorations would be nice until January. Since my house may be almost normal by then. Sadly, I had an attack of mother guilt. Seeing as two of my children haven't celebrated Christmas I knew that I couldn't leave the tree alone this year. It was grand when I thought Seth would be in charge. I'm usually on the sofa sipping warm beverages and passing out ornaments. He does the grueling work.

The foot thing was only the start of a ridiculous evening. We have a dining room table in our living room. If I haven't mentioned that before, it's because that doesn't hold a candle to the toilet that's hanging out in the hallway. We decided to put the tree ON the table, thus killing two birds with one stone. Josiah can't tip the tree over and we don't have to move anything to put the tree up. The only problem is that I couldn't reach the top of the tree to put in the branches. The kids couldn't reach the tree at ALL. Seth in his pained stupor, came up with the idea to...move the tree to the floor and decorate it there. Wonderful!

I hauled the tree (now fully put together) to the floor and we commence with decorating traditions. Hot chocolate and brownies, hanging ornaments. Josiah's screaming, Seth's worried about spills, and Sally can't seem to keep an ornament on the tree. They all fall off when she walks away. I'm snapping pictures like a madwoman and too soon it's over. Now the real fun begins...It's time for me to PICK UP THE DECORATED TREE and place it gingerly on the table. Right, since I'm secretly the hulk. I managed lift off with a little aid from Seth but then...whoa to the right, then left, then some shattering, and finally I slam it onto the table.

Sigh.

The top of the tree won't fit. Seth and I look at each other and Eli speaks for us all when he says, "It doesn't look like a real Christmas tree." That's true, dear one, it looks like a Christmas bush. I laid the top of the tree horizontally and mounded some lights on it and called it a night. When I plugged in the lights all of the kids cheered, so I would say we've had success.

Some photos from the evening...Seth and the kiddos, Josiah finally stops crying so he can make a phone call on my lens cap, and the girls dropping hanging ornaments on the Christmas bush.