Christmas Tradition Number 4

After our oldest got his tree up, it was time for the family tree to be put up and decorated. We've had artificial and real trees in the past. I always had artificial trees growing up and Jim always had real ones. Real trees are nice but quite a bit of work...and I get tired of cleaning up needles all the time even way after Christmas. This year we got an artificial just cut tree that is prelit. It's gorgeous and does look a little real.

We always put lots of decorations on it...to some people too many (my mother at Christmas commented that we had way too many decorations) but I disagree. There's still lots of green showing through...plus all of the decorations on the tree have some sort of sentimental meaning to them. We have decorations we bought on our various trips...our honeymoon, Tampa, SanDiego, other places that I can't think of right now. When the boys were born we bought baby's first Christmas ornaments...our oldest has a train built with each year up to five. We have some of the Christmas glass bulbs that we had our first year of marriage. We have ornaments made by our oldest during school and preschool, ornaments given to me when I used to teach, and others made or given to us by family and friends. I have a few ornament that I enjoyed as a child. Each of these ornaments mean something to us...and cause us to smile as we adorn the tree. At the top of the tree is one of my favorite angels (I collect them) that lights up and holds some decorations herself.

Too many ornaments? I don't think so...in fact there could be a lot more.