The reason why someone in our family will be getting an entire case of scotch tape for Christmas.

Today the kids were making ornaments to decorate the new Christmas tree that we got for our kitchen. (What, don't you have a tree in your kitchen?) (OK, so I may or may not have purchased the tree as incentive* for the kids to do something that I wanted them to do) (and I like having a tree** in the kitchen) I had planned to decorate the tree with chili peppers or something like that, but today the offspring*** were too excited and decided to take matters into their hands and use a case of printer paper to make ornaments for the new tree.

They made tons of snowflakes, a big paper chain and a really cool star for the top.

Max is an amazing kid, if he has access to a bunch of paper, scissors, tape, crayons and a stapler, there is no limit to what this kid can create.

Earlier today, Max was working on a new creation for the tree when it appeared that he needed some tape. He asked everyone if we knew where the tape was.

Due to the fact that Max is generally the only one who uses tape, none of the rest of us knew where it was.

I even checked in my super secret tape hiding place, and there wasn't any tape there. (apparently, Max discovered my super secret tape hiding place)

Max was continually growing more agitated, and kept asking us where the tape was. (because everyone knows that asking someone the same thing over and over and over will make them know the answer)

"Where is the tape?"

"Who hid the tape?"

"Why won't anybody help me find the tape?"

"Why am I the only one looking for the tape?"

And finally.........

"IT'S NOT FAIR THAT I'M THE ONLY ONE LOOKING FOR THE TAPE!!!"

I calmly suggested that he look in his room because he WAS the last one to use the tape.

"IT'S NOT IN MY ROOM!!! SOMEBODY TOOK IT!! I NEED THE TAPE!! WHY ISN'T ANYBODY HELPING ME LOOK FOR THE TAPE? IT'S NOT FAIR THAT NOBODY IS HELPING ME LOOK FOR THE TAPE!! WHERE IS IT? WHERE IS IT? WHERE IS ............

Then he spotted the tape sitting on the kitchen table right next to where he was standing. "Oh there it is." he said simply, then grabbed it and walked away.

Here is what the tree looked like when the kids were finished. I actually like it! (The huge decorations kind of cover the fact that the tree is incredibly scrawny) The big square snowflakes were made by Max.

*Some people prefer to call it bribery, however, I feel that bribery is such an ugly word.

Bribery is when someone says "I'll give this to you if you do something for me" and incentive is when someone says "Do this for me, and I will give you this"

See, completely different.

**And I use the term "tree" very loosely. It was $20 at Wal Mart

***The boys actually wanted to drape the tree with cords and cables from multiple electronic devices.

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.

My grandparents tree

Today I was thinking about my grandparents Christmas tree. For as long as I could remember, My Grandma and Grandpa had this artificial tree. It was made all of plastic with plastic branches and needles.
I loved the shiny plastic ornaments and the big lights that would adorn the tree. It was always so exciting when they put their tree up.
Each year the poor tree became increasingly fragile, until one year Grandpa decided just to put up the top half of the tree which he stood on an end table in front of the window.
One year, my brother went and cut down live trees for some of our family and friends. While he was there, he cut one down for our grandparents.
When he brought the tree to their house, grandpa discovered that it was too tall for their living room.
He cut off the bottom of the tree to see if it would fit, but it was still too tall.
He cut off some of the very top branches, but it was still too tall.
Finally, he cut off some more from the bottom of the tree, this time above the very bottom branches.
Now he was faced with a new problem. The bottom branches were the ones that curved upward and filled in the shape of the tree. Without those branches, the tree looked quite scrawny and bare, so he cut the branches off the part of the tree that he had just removed, and nailed them back onto the tree.
This seemed to solve the problem, and he was able to put the tree in the tree stand and it fit perfectly in their living room.
My grandparents spent the next while decorating the tree. They hung the lights and the ornaments but when they got to the star they had a problem. With the top few branches missing, there wasn't a branch that stood straight up to hold the star.
Grandma went to the kitchen, got her wooden spoon and tied it, handle up, in the top of the tree. This held the star perfectly.
The tree looked beautiful, and unless you knew the story, you wouldn't have known about how the tree was held together.

Tree tales

As I was writing yesterday's post, I got to thinking about the Christmas trees of my past.
When I was little, we always had a live tree. My dad would meticulously hang the icicles one at a time all over the tree, perfectly spaced and perfectly even. (hey, at least I know where I got it from)
When I was a little older, we invested in one of those new fangled fake trees. They didn't smell as good, but they didn't leave sap and needles all over the carpet.

As time went on, our artificial tree obtained the nickname of "The toilet brush tree" mostly because it looked like a bunch of green toilet brushes sticking out of a green pole.

Eventually we (meaning me and my brother) decided that the toilet brush tree just wasn't cutting it anymore, and we begged and pleaded to have a live tree because having people see a bunch of light covered toilet brushes in one's window can really damage the social status of a teenager once again had live trees at Christmas time. (sap and pine needles included)

Plus, the live trees just smelled so much better. (not that the toilet brush like branches were ever used for anything other than decorative purposes) (to my knowledge)

I remember one year that someone told us that if you put sugar in the water for the tree, that the tree would stay green longer.
Each day, we would fill up the water dish in the tree stand with a generous amount of sugar water.
That tree was so thirsty! Each morning we were amazed to see that the water was nearly gone!
This went on for days and days. We figured that at this rate, the tree would stay green until Easter.

One evening, we were sitting in the kitchen eating dinner and we heard a strange noise coming from the living room.

When we went in to investigate, we found our dog drinking the sugar water out of the tree stand.

We should have known. Bubbles had been extra hyper all week long (and that's really saying something for a poodle/terrier mix)

Next story............

Several years ago, back when I had a real job (with a cubicle and a 401K and everything) I was sitting in my cubicle one morning working hard as always, and my friend who sat next to me came in late.
She seemed rather upset, and after a while told me why.
She had put up her Christmas tree the night before, and that morning her cat (a seriously HUGE cat) jumped in the tree and knocked it over. She had spent the morning cleaning everything up and trying to set the tree back up. Unfortunately, every time she got it standing, the big cat would jump in it again.

Eventually she gave up and came to work.

After an hour or so of her stewing over the tree while trying to get some work done, she went to the manager and told her that she needed to take some vacation time for a few hours to take care of an emergency.
When she came back that afternoon, she told us what she had done.

She said that she hung the tree from the ceiling so when the cat jumped on it, it just swung back and forth instead of falling over.

Genius.

I think she should have patented the idea. I think it would work for babies and toddlers too.

Earlier today, Aaron helped me write a 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.