De-trimming the Tree

I've noticed people generally fall into two categories with decorating and un-decorating their Christmas trees.

Category 1 - The tree goes up before or around Thanksgiving, but is cleared out along with cleaning up Christmas dinner. My sister is in this category. She proudly declared all over Facebook on December 26th that her home was decoration free! I have another friend who did the same thing, but she shall remain nameless...

Category 2 - The tree goes up mid-December and comes down a little after New Years. We fall into this category. What usually determines the timing our tree comes down is when we are no longer plugging in the lights, although if left up to Eli, the tree would probably stay up all year. Every morning for the past month he has toddled out of his room and pointed up to the tree saying, "peeeeeesss!" His way of asking for the lights to be turned on. First thing every morning and heaven forbid if they get turned off during the day!

This was a strange Christmas for us given that we closed on our new home Friday, December 4th, moved in on Saturday and then Patrick left on Sunday for a week long business trip. The next weekend we decided to go get our tree. For the past eight years "going to get our tree" has meant a trip to a tree lot in frigid temperatures to pick out a live tree. However, I made the suggestion that because we were already so stressed and tired from the craziness of the past three months and that we would be going to Idaho for Christmas we go ahead and get a pre-lit, fake tree.

Patrick looked at me as though words of blasphemy had just come out of my mouth.

I reasoned with him that we'd still get a live tree next year and how fun would it be to put the fake one we used this year in the basement next year! Two trees! How great would that be?! So he relented and off to Walmart we went. Have to say, we were all a little underwhelmed, but it was very nice not having to trim anything off the bottom because we miscalculated how much we should have asked them to take off while we were at lot. Patrick insists that our fake one was still crooked, but I didn't see it. But the fake one sort of grew on me. My arms didn't get all scratched up trying to put on lights. You simply plugged them together and wah-lah.!. White, glittery lights!

And the best part came yesterday when I took the tree down. (How come putting up the tree is always a "we" effort, but taking it down is an "I" effort? Actually, Caleb and Eli stepped into help, but I imagine this means none of the ornaments have their hooks attached anymore.) No dead needles needed to be vacuumed up. We didn't have to drag it out to the curb. Our curb is 150 yards away from the house now! Although, I did have to have the boys sit on the box to get it closed. Maybe Walmart never intended the tree to go back in its original box.

Just as I was ready to settle in my mind that a fake, pre-lit tree is the way to go for Christmases in the future, Daniel walked up to me and very sweetly asked, "Can we get a real tree and put all different colored lights on it next year?" Okay... depsite the extra work involved, I admit we are are "real tree" kind of family...