Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree....Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree. Oh Christmas Tr...

I find myself in the evenings just sitting and staring at our Christmas tree. It's so beautiful. I look at it from top to bottom and notice the gaps where I don't have an ornament, look at my favorites, and get mesmerized by the light patterns. We used to have blinking lights, but that drove me crazy because I kept trying to follow the blinks and anticipate which sections would blink next. Is that an OCD thing? What can I say...I'm weird! This year Brad and I went with all white lights on our tree. I think it's the best one we ever had.

We have a tradition with the ornaments too. Every year we have to get a Charlie Brown ornament that has the year on it. We have been doing this since we were married in 1991. The only year we don't have is '97. I don't know what happened then. Maybe we were too poor to get one? At any rate, those ornaments are our favs and I think if there was ever a fire in our house, I would climb up in the attic, dig around in the Christmas boxes, and save those ornaments!

A funny story:

When I was little, every year my family would get a white flocked tree and decorate with gold ornaments and white lights. It was so pretty although white flocking would always end up everywhere and we would constantly be having to clean it up. One year, I decided to help out taking down the decorations and trim the tree. I thought that really meant to 'trim' the tree. So I got a hacksaw and went to work. Flocking was everywhere and the tree was cut up pretty bad. Really funny. Plus I thought that if you put the lights on first, you probably take them off first. So, tree branches were everywhere in the living room. The lights were hanging out in spots around the cut up tree and tangled up with the ornaments. I didn't realize what a mess I had made until my mom came in and was completely shocked at the carnage I had inflicted on the tree....poor tree.