Tree Decorating

We had fun decorating the Christmas tree last night. The kids were very excited to pull out all of the ornaments and find the ones they had made throughout the past several years of school. It's always a challenge for me to come up with creative ways to tell them to hang one of their handmade ornaments in the back of the tree without hurting their feelings. Sarah finally caught on to what I was doing, so I had to explain to her, "I love all of the ornaments you made, but some of them are prettier than others, so I want those ones in the front!" She seemed to take it okay. They took turns using the ladder to get all of the good ornaments up high so Sam couldn't reach them.

Of course, it didn't take Sam long to figure out how to reach the best, most breakable ornaments.

While decorating the tree was fun, Matthew, pubescent boy that he is, was especially excited to hang up the kissing balls.

Everyone wanted to put the star on the top of the tree, but Matthew was the loudest and most obnoxious about it, so he got to do it.

All of the tree decorators were happy with our beautiful tree even though they had to decorate it almost exclusively on the top half.

Unfortunately, a tree that is decorated only on the top half tends to be very top heavy, so it looked somewhat like this in the morning only with fewer ornaments still on it. Luckily, no one was sleeping under it like we usually do the first night.

Abby was very happy, though. After we re-decorated the tree and strapped it to a bolt in the wall, she got to put the star back on the top.

And now we have fewer breakable ornaments for Sam to target.