O Christmas Tree

This is part of AndreaClaire's Christmas Memory Challenge series.

It's almost time for the tree...almost...

I loved tree decorating day at our house. Sometime the tree came from the woods by my uncle's house, sometimes from a neighbourhood tree farm, once from the hill in parents' backyard, and sometimes the tree just appeared.

There were two big boxes of decorations, one was the box for the yellow vacuum my parents had for years. The decorations were carefully stored in the big box - it was like a puzzle - my mom knew how to put the small boxes back just so, but it was so much more fun for us to take the boxes out. There were the gold teardrops, the glass bells, the red glass baubles, the sugar plums, the scary santas, the little angels, the very special homemade decorations we started making when we were, oh, two years old.

There was also cheese (not that I ate it, but it was important), crackers, maybe antipasto, veggies, egg nog in special glasses with green crests and metal animals (chocolate milk for egg nog haters like me).

The lights went on first. Then the decorations...most of the decorations got placed on the tree with a story.

Now that I have my own family, we're following some of the same traditions. We don't have a lot of the special homemade decorations...yet...we do have a craft loving three year old. We have a couple of boxes of decorations and they have come from all over the world, so there are stories. We have treats and goodies - Alex gets his egg nog out of a carton, not the real stuff like my dad made because I'm still an egg nog hater. Unless there's enough rum in it to make me forget it's egg nog.

The tree goes up on Saturday...I don't know who is more excited, me or J!