Christmas Tree

There was much discussion in our house about the correct time to get the Christmas tree. In my family, we were allowed to get the tree anytime after my mother's birthday on December 5th. Being absolute Christmas hounds, my brothers and I made sure that we had a tree by the following day. In Mark's family, the tree arrives much closer to Christmas. He even admires the tradition of waiting to put up the tree until CHRISTMAS EVE!!! The horror! The long and the short of this is that we finally got a Christmas tree yesterday. We had a few friends over last night to help with the decorating, and our house actually feels festive now.

I couldn't find the last box of ornaments, so the tree looks a bit different than usual. Still, I think it really did end up looking beautiful (but then again I always think that). I wondered if people would actually take the time to do the decorating, but one friend started right off by putting on the lights. Another friend spent quite a bit of time artfully arranging the string of wooden beads. We try to buy a new ornament when we travel, so it is always fun to get out that box and look at all the different ones we've collected so far. The new ornaments for this year are the beaded ones we got in South
Africa, and the metal-dipped acorn we got at the Smithsonian.

Once the tree was up, the food was eaten, and the songs were sung, we went on to presents. These were just the presents between the friends, but it was a nice little exchange. This picture reminds me of a six-year-old, but his extra special gift was a wine opener.