Last night we finally erected our Christmas tree.
We’re a bit late this year with getting things organized but we were trying to wait for Master19 to come up from Brisbane so we could do it all together, but for one reason or another it never eventuated.
Even Miss16 didn’t make it to the tree decorating because of work, but we couldn’t put it off any longer – late tree assembly is number eight on the top ten catalyst events resulting in dysfunctional families. Or we just couldn’t take the endless, whining, zombiefying pleas for Miss8 to put the tree up. One of those.
For years we’ve alternated between nicely decorated trees, beautifully colour coordinated with green and silver, or crappily decorated trees, the crappy part being the toilet roll decorations my kids have made (bless ’em).
This year we decided to just get all the decorations out and let the little buggers do whatever they wanted to the tree – so naturally we ended up with a tree resplendently adorned with every single bauble and bit of tinsel in the house.
Unlike most families, I suspect, the last thing we add to our little corner of Christmas isn’t the angel or star on top of the tree, it’s the kiddy pen around it – not to stop the gifts from getting out but to stop the kids from getting in, or they’ll unwrap all the presents and destroy the lights and generally bringing the tree down on top of themselves.
So now the tree is up and safely behind it’s prison fence it’s finally starting to feel like Christmas.
