Sunday, November 29, 2009

The yearly decorating of the Christmas tree




Last night I told Brielle and Aaron that they could drag the tree and Christmas decorations out of their hiding place in the closet under the basement stairs and bring them upstairs to the living room so we could do all of the decorating today.
Instead of leaving it in the box until today, like I thought they would do, they ended up putting the tree together, only they really didn't understand how to make it stand up straight.

To say that the tree was leaning would be an understatement.

This morning I woke up to a sniffy nosed, watery eyed and very feverish little Max. The poor kid was so miserable that he was close to tears.
I've spent the majority of my day with him cuddled in my lap or snuggled up next to me on the couch. He finally took a nice long nap and when he woke up he was feeling a little bit better so we decided to decorate our Christmas tree.
Max immediately found the Santa hats that we try every year to get the kids to wear for our Christmas card pictures, and he wore it all day. He kept saying Ho Ho Ho and calling himself "Max Claus"
We managed to get the tree to stand up straight and found a string of lights that had the fewest non working bulbs and put those on the tree, then I let the kids loose to decorate.
Aaron spent the next while seeing how much he could irritate me by placing more than one ornament on the same branch.

We go over this every year. The ornaments need to be EVENLY SPACED throughout the tree.

In order to help them understand how important this is, I started singing this song.

(Sung to the tune of Deck The Halls)

Trim the tree with
OCD,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Space the ornaments evenly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Don't hang them close to one another,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Or you will annoy your mother,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Their reaction was to laugh out loud and say "Ha ha ha! Mom, you're funny!" and then continue hanging the ornaments where they wanted.

Hmmmm...... Does anyone know of a good place to buy some lumps of coal?





sidenote: I just want to mention that this is a big running joke between me and the kids. They know I'm kidding (sort of ;0) and they are joking around too. It's like a yearly tradition for us to decorate the tree with me freaking out at the placement of the ornaments and them placing them in a way that they know will cause me to freak out.


7 comments:

Rachel Sue said...

My children not only decorate the tree however they want, they rearrange the ornaments on a daily basis!

mommeeof10 said...

My kids set up and decorated the tree by themselves. I wonder where the tree is missing a branch, as they have one left. Maybe it is from one of the 3 little ones we have?

Kristina P. said...

This is why Adam doesn't get to touch the tree.

M said...

Our dollar store has had coal in years past; I know because my oldest bought that for his father. And I am so with you sister on this whole CDO thing; my kids just haven't caught on yet as to how much it annoys me and I just run along behind them rearranging things.

Me (aka Danielle) said...

Sounds like the account my our tree trimming this year! Although, all the effort I put into, and they have decorated it and redecorated it a million times already! *sigh

rocslinger said...

Max Claus, Too funny. I hope he's feeling better.

Damama T said...

Traditions are important. And the more they drive you nuts the longer the kids will remember them. LOL! The tree looked great.

WV: SUBLER - The clinical name for a for a kid who regularly subjects his OCD mother to non-logical object arrangements.