This year...

I was once a Christmas perfectionist. I can admit that about myself...

This year has cured me of my perfectionist tendencies (somewhat).

This year I had realtively little time to devote to decorating...

school, children and husband were demanding most of what I had

(the house has gotten little of my attention these days).

In years past I would spend a day or two pulling out favorite decorations

and placing them here and there until I liked the way it looked.

This year I took one afternoon (roughly 3 hours) on the Sunday after Thanksgiving

and said to myself,"whatever gets done while Devin is napping is all that is going to get done

this year."

That was hard for me.

I love Christmas.

I love the decorations

the music,

baking treats,
all of it.

I took those 3 hours and put out the things

I thought the kids would like most.

And while the decorating is much more simple

this year,

I don't think the kids have noticed.

And it made it possible for me to not feel so stressed.

That's a good thing, right?

The tree is quite unique this year...
we do have a fake tree.

We bought it when Jenna was a baby.

The pre lit kind.

I was so excited to not have to string the lights.

Part of being a tree perfectionist is that the lights

have to be just right.

The prelit tree insured that they were just right without me

having to do much work to get them that way.

As the years have gone by less and less of the lights on

the pre lit tree

have worked.

This year when we plugged it all in,

only half a strand lit up.

This led us to make an interesting decision:

We took all of the lights off the prelit tree.

Weird huh?

Then lacking the time to make sure the lights were just right,

I allowed Loren to throw on a couple of strands of colored lights

(I prefer white...but we didn't have any)

That was hard for me.

They definitly were not just right.

I also lacked the time to spread all of the branches

and make sure there were no "holes"

It bothers me a little...

if I take the time to really look, there are holes all over the place.

Devin is quite distructive this year.

That is why there are very few decorations on the bottom third of the tree.
The other two thirds is overly crowded with all of the treasured ornaments
that we don't want broken.

Again, I turn a blind eye and don't let it bother me.

So what if each ornament isn't perfectly spaced

from the others.

Who really cares, Right?

NOT ME...

at least not as much as I thought I would.

In realtily, our tree is a very good reflection of

our family (busy with a destructive almost 2 year old)

this year.