Haul out the Holly… (December Daily Day 1)

I swear, every year I get more and more disgusted when I see Christmas decorations filling the aisles of my local stores before Halloween, and hear Christmas music booming from their speakers weeks before Thanksgiving. Seriously?! I'm sorry, but I cannot even think about Christmas, much less get into the mood of the holiday, until after I've had my big family dinner giving my thanks for the year.  And don't get me started on the pre Black Friday deals. Christmas has become so commercialized these days that it is now taking over our other holidays just so we can be the first to get the latest and greatest gizmo, toy, blah blah blah for the so called "greatest deal of the century!" Ugh. I can't stand it. But enough about how much I hate the commercialization of my favorite holiday.

Every year I strive to have the decorations at least drug out of storage, if not all put up, by the first week of December. This is probably the first year we have ever had the tree up, ornaments on, and the majority of the inside of our house decorated for the holidays on the very first day of December. I really can't take credit for being totally on the ball though. Let's just say I had some motivation. In the days after Thanksgiving, and leading up to December, this was the conversation.

Mason: "Mom can we put the tree on Sunday."
Me: "Sure Mason."
Mason: "Yes! I can't wait."

Come Sunday morning the conversation went a bit more like this:

6am, Mason: "Can we put up the tree yet?"
Me (grumpy and sleepy, mumbling into my pillow): "Not yet mason, it's still early."
7am, Mason: "Can we put up the tree now?"
7:30am, Mason: "Get out of the bed! I want to put up the tree!"
Me: "Mason, go downstairs. I will get up when I get up! We can put up the tree after I've had my coffee and breakfast."
7:45am, Mason (in his best whining tone): "Mom, you promised we could put up the tree today."
7:50am, Mason: "MOM! Come on, GET OUT OF BED! Please! Seriously, can we put up the tree now? MOM!"
8:00am, Mason: "Mom…"
Me and Fred: "MASON!" 

Actually, this is how a typical weekend morning sounds. The kids getting up way too early and then bugging us every 10 seconds to get out of bed and get them breakfast, or play with them, or whatever nonsense they start begging for starting at the but crack of dawn. I don't know about you, but this Mama is so not a morning person. Not a good combination, young kids and an anti-morning persona. Especially with Mason, who needs constant stimulation as he tends to have the attention span of a gnat. It's exhausting. Probably another reason I need to have my cup of coffee in the morning before I can function. Trust me, you do not want to encounter me on a day I have not had my morning cup o' joe. It's like that Tempur-Pedic commercial, which is all too funny (mostly because it's true).

Seriously though, we got the tree up and all it's ornaments on in record time. Usually I am still decorating while dinner is cooking in the background. This year we were all done by the afternoon. It is unfortunate that our tree is having a bit of a short out with a strand or too, so we have some dark patches on our tree when it's lit. I suppose it is the perfectionist in me that is having the most problem with that. I swear I start to twitch each time I look at these pictures and walk by the tree at night. But I am learning to let it go. This is the new me, fresh off my breakdown, and being easy breezy. (Hahahaha. I'm sure Fred is reading this right now and screaming, "liar!) OK, so I might not be all easy breezy but I'm getting better at it. Take for example the ornaments. Usually I am very particular about spreading them out and making sure it all looks even. This I just let the kids go for it. I handed them ornaments (the non-breakable ones) and they put them on the tree. It was a big cluster of beauty from about the middle of the tree down. The top, totally empty. I had to stifle a giggle when I turned around. Lucky I had all those breakable ones to fill in the top and even it all out. They did a great job though.

That evening I found them sitting in the front of the tree looking at all the ornaments, admiring what a great job they had done and pointing out which ones they had made. It was too cute of a moment to pass up. I'm always on the lookout for a good photo op. Once they caught me taking pictures though, they had to pose in from of the tree and even at one point shouted, "did you get that shot of us with our arms around each other?" Such posers these too. But I suppose that just comes with the territory when your Mom is a photographer.