Deck the Halls! :)

I am getting so excited about Christmas! This is a time of year full of traditions, so maybe that's why we love it so much! :) Yesterday the girls sweetly decluttered all the surfaces so that we could decorate today! Yay! :) Hopefully Sarah will take lots of pictures of our tree decorating so that we can do a fun post and you can see our tree! I've discovered there are 3 kinds of tree decorators:
~The Elegant Beauty
~The Cram-As-Much-As-You-Can-Just-To-Be-Glitzy
~The Cram-As-Much-As-You-Can-Because-It-All-Has-Memories

We belong to the latter version. Our tree always looks like it belongs to a large family. First it is wrapped from the inside out with lights. Then we have legions of paper ornaments made by eight little hands over the years, mixing with elegant glass balls. We have lopsided pine-straw hearts hanging proudly beside olive-wood ornaments from Israel. There is a Christmas Pickle hidden somewhere in the branches. There are the little tin marching band people to hang up, the floppy little fabric music note that must have it's story told every year to the youngest family members who do not remember. There is the beautiful pearly blue glass ball to take out of it's velvet case, and the crystal dove with the olive branch to carefully hand to Mama to hang up. Then of course, amongst all the finery, we string popcorn and cranberries, and red and green wooden beads. We perch gold-painted pine-cones here and there. We older ones find the ornaments an old baby-sitter gave to us, and try to remember her. (I never could!) :)
To an outsider, and especially the "Elegant Beauty" tree person, our tree looks like mayhem. But it is a tree filled with precious memories and love. A tree that represents 22 years of family life. It's our tree, and has changed very little (barring the introduction of even *more* paper ornaments) over my whole life. And there's something extremely comforting in that knowledge, you know? :) We love our tree, and valiantly guard it against tinsel, and I hope that even people who are more particular about their decorating, can see that our tree is not a work of art, but a history of our family. Just as colorful, varied, and homey as we are :) ~Rachel