Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Our Christmas decorations are fairly pathetic. Since we have normally been away at one of our parent's homes for Christmas we haven't really made much effort in the past to decorate our house nicely for the holidays. Some years we didn't do anything at all since we'd be gone for the majority of the holidays. We figured it was too much work to decorate only to leave and then come home to take it all down. This year we are hosting Christmas with the DeBoer side so we decided we'd actually put some effort into decorating. I'd been wanting to get a new tree for quite awhile and had been searching for deals on the internet but didn't really come across any that stood out so we just put up our ridiculous, Charlie Brown-type tree again and planned to get a new artificial tree when they went on clearance after Christmas.

Apparently Luke had another idea. He's been extremely curious about all the ornaments on the tree this year (last year I expected him to be more interested but he pretty much just left them alone... not so this year) Since the majority of our ornaments look like little toys, he just wants to play with them. The whole "look, but don't touch" thing doesn't really work here.

One evening Matt and I were busy in the kitchen, knowing that Luke was playing in the living room with the nativity scene, when we heard a crash followed by crying. Best we can figure, Luke tried to pull a stubborn ornament off the tree and ended up pulling the tree down on himself! No, I didn't get pictures, although now I do wish I had captured the moment. (does that make me a bad mom?) Luke was fine, a little shaken up but other than that no harm done. The tree, on the other hand, was not so fine.

(after picking it up off Luke and propping it against the wall)

That was when we decided to bite the bullet and get a new Christmas tree before going on clearance... one that looked much nicer and was much more sturdy incase Luke got the nerve up to pull more ornaments off the tree.

This new tree is SO much nicer! It comes in three parts vs. the old one that had a center stand and you needed to put each individual branch on separately. It is also pre-lit which is, oh so nice! I put lights on the old tree three times- once because I misjudged how long the strand of lights was and ran out of lights by the time I reached the top of the tree, another time because Luke pulled half the strand off the tree, and the third time I forget why. Regardless, it was awesome to just connect the plugs and be done with it! The only down side is that it is an artificial tree, meaning no fresh pine smell. I bought some Christmas tree-smelling candles but they don't quite cut it. oh well.

Matt and Luke setting up the new tree

"Fluffing" the branches

The finished product!

Hopefully this tree will last through a few more Christmases and a few more kids wanting to play with the ornaments!

I let Luke play with most of the Christmas decorations, so long as they are safe. As a kid, I LOVED playing the different decorations, especially the nativity scene, so it is fun for me to watch Luke play with some of the same things this year.

This is the nativity scene my parents had in our house while I was growing up. My parents gave it to me last year. I have lots of fun memories with this nativity set. It is so much fun to watch Luke playing with it now.

A few days after this all of the nativity scene figures disappeared. I searched high and low but couldn't find them anywhere. After about a week, Matt finally found them in a random cabinet! I was thrilled. The thrill wore off, however, when we discovered that the majority of the animals on one set no longer had any ears! Oh, the joys of toddler-hood.