Our first tri-state Christmas is shaping up to be memorable. Opening our Christmas boxes was such a time capsule, since we celebrated last Christmas in transit. The last time these decorations saw the light of day, we had a two-year-old and two one-year-olds!
Everything gets put up in a new place and therefore viewed in a new way.
I also get to appreciate gifts from long ago for the very first time, so it's like being given them all over again. This is the beautiful Christmas card holder I begged a friend to make for me, getting its very first use. Our Christmas cards will have to go out near or even shortly after Christmas. In the meantime, I'm collecting addresses already because we're not the only moved ones this year among out acquaintances!
MOPS fall ended with a pajama day. Devon joined the Moppets saying John 3:16 for the moms in big group.
That weekend's ambitious plan was to hit Schmidt's Christmas Tree Farm in Pennsylvania for a freshly cut Christmas tree. It was a luxury we had to give up while living in Florida. There just aren't many tree farms there. Haha.
Unfortunately, Saturday's plans were rained out. Hours and hours of rain. No problem, we said, we'll go Sunday after church. What better way to start remembering the baby Jesus than worshiping Sunday morning, celebrating the baptism of our favorite baby twins, and then getting a tree just minutes away on the way home. We couldn't help it if everyone else in the tri-state area was rained out Saturday and had the same Sunday afternoon plans. We got the kids' church clothes off and mud clothes on carside as vehicles whizzed by us, Christmas trees tied to the roofs already. The kids enjoyed playing in the huge bark playground as Craig and I tried to formulate a plan.
The first consideration was the mud. Tons of it. How muddy was our tree going to get? How muddy were we going to get?
Then we saw the Tree of Saws. Hmm.... we're supposed to take one to cut our Christmas tree. That would take one hand. With our three remaining hands, we needed to guide our three kids onto the tractor and keep them from wanting to touch the saw as we were driven out to the tree fields. Then we needed to find a tree, keep the kids at a safe distance as we cut it, load the tree, the saw, and everybody else back onto the tractor, and try to keep the kids from touching the tree AND the saw all the way back. Then we'd ditch the saw and get the tree AND kids over the foot-deep mud ruts and back to the car safely.
I looked at Craig.
He looked at me.
"I miss Lowe's," he said.
"I do, too. Let's go there," I said.
We paused.
"I'm serious," I added.
"Me too!"
In wise, all-knowing tones we informed the kids that we were just about ready to wrap it up at "the place where we took you to see where our Christmas Tree was grown". Now we were going to the car to go see "the place where we get our Christmas tree and tie it to the top of the car". It seemed like a perfectly plausible explanation to toddlers. Thank goodness!
Of course, not everybody made it to Lowe's.... Devon and Mommy got to go in and select a tree while Daddy stayed in the car with the napping girls.
"Get us a big one, Devon," Daddy said.
We raced around Lowe's admiring the trees in our usual 5-6 foot row. Daddy had said to get a big tree, so I rounded the corner and pointed out the 7-8 foot row, lifting one tree and then another so Devon could admire them and choose his favorite. He didn't really get the concept of choosing one of them over another to bring home and kept wanting to sneak off and play with the electronic Christmas toys, so I picked one that looked nice and flagged some help to trim the trunk and wrap it for us.
Somehow I had overlooked the fact that the 7-8 foot row became the 9-10 foot row halfway through and I had chosen an unbelievably big tree. I paled a little as the register tag revealed that this tree was way bigger than we were used to. I almost chickened out. Would our stand even be big enough? Would we be able to get it home? Could we lift it?
The kids waited in the car through the long task of roping the tree securely to the top.
It was a Fraser Fir, a lighter choice, so the hoist up on top went much
better than expected. I told myself that all we had to do at home was
lift it down without getting crushed by it.
It ended up being the work of Sunday just to get it home and in the stand. It ended up being the perfect size for our first floor, just missing the ceiling after we trimmed the highest branch by a few inches. The kids watched classic Rudolph for the first time in a year as Craig and I screwed it into the stand. There is only so much that three toddlers can do in one day. Monday night's work was stringing the lights. All three went round and round behind Daddy holding each string.
Thankfully one of the very few things I had bought after last year's season were new strings of lights, as ours were just starting to go. We had enough to light the much taller tree. When it was all lit up I was glad that I hadn't chickened out and bought a smaller one. One of the advantages of still having a completely unfurnished gathering room is we have plenty of room for a truly amazing tree. We haven't worked out what exactly we'll sit on Christmas morning. Pillows? Bean bags? Folding chairs?
Tuesday morning at six am the ornaments started coming out. My plan was to do them in short bursts throughout the day to keep everyone entertained and reduce toddler burnout (see Carrie's face in the tree lighting picture).
We truly have an amazing amount of ornaments, and this is the first time we've ever had a tree that didn't seem totally overloaded. Both sets of grandparents collected throughout our childhoods for Mommy and Daddy. They also kept detailed notes on the origin of each one, whether handmade in BSF childcare or purchased on a special family vacation as a memento. We even have a white, wooden moose of Craig's that reads Baltimore, 1987, so we know that when he was fourteen he visited a mere hour from where we live now. It's so, so neat to have these, and it's a tradition we want to start for the kids. I'm hoping to purchase a special Christmas box for each this year, and start their respective ornament lists with the several they've gotten so far.
When Craig and I got married, we kept up the tradition, purchasing commemorative ornaments on our various vacations and a few special ones each Christmas. We have a "New Home" ornament from 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2011 as we purchased or rented our first four homes. Now we need one for 2014, as we moved in on New Year's Eve!
Like I said before, the ornaments and decorations stayed boxed last year, but we were gifted with several lovely and unique mementos on leaving Vero Beach last year, and the kids have added some through fun trips and church crafts. These have been coming out of the most unexpected places in EVERY room of the house. It's been like a treasure hunt! I'll be putting away clothes in the girls' closet and find a box with the three favorite Disney character ornaments the kids got on their first trip to Disney World. I'll be collecting plastic fish from a broken game on the top of our dresser and lay hands on a small box with a hand-painted sand dollar that's spent the whole year there waiting for Christmas. I spent an evening printing tiny pictures to stuff frame ornaments that have never been stuffed, some of them dating back to the girls' first year!
This was our first outdoor decorating effort in thirteen years. It's our side mudroom entrance, so not even very visible from the street. Devon and I just cooked it up one afternoon to surprise Daddy and give him something cheerful to look at every night when coming home from work. We're thinking of going much larger scale next year, even doing something that goes across the front of the house. It's a good start.
P.S. (Dec. 22) My final festive decorating effort was to finish the Christmas stockings I've been planning for the kids long before their conception. When Craig and I were engaged I cross-stitched stockings for the two of us. When I did the finish sewing, I bought enough fabric to finish off three more stockings and put it aside for someday. Quite the planner, I was. I finally finished the third (Carrie's) topper last week, and spent Saturday morning at a friend's house doing the finish sewing because my machine is on the fritz. Whew! I gotta admit, crafting projects are a lot more fun when you're not already parenting and running a household. I'm just glad they're done.
