We've reached a nice balance in our large family. The Golden Age if you will. We have enough older kids that things get done, but enough little kids that things are still chaotic. Getting the Christmas tree this year involved Mark, Ian, Genevieve, and Daniel leaving and Shane, Fiona, and the three youngest at home with me.
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| A tree so big it couldn't make the first corner? |
They came home with a noble fir for a killer deal. A local guy has been growing trees for his friends for many years. This year he decided to sell some to the public. They also had a goat and a mini pony, which Genevieve loved of course.
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| XL tree for an XL family |
We of course always have candy cane cocoa on Tree Decorating Day, but since Mark had to buy candy canes and dairy free milk for me, he decided to add cookies as well...
The tree was just a little too tall, so Mark brought the chainsaw in (like, in the house) to shorten the trunk a bit. "I've always wanted to do this," he said as he started the chainsaw (like, on my carpet). Halfway through, he stopped and called out, "Sorry Mom!" because yes, I'm sure his mother was freaking out in heaven.
Let me tell you, having a strong son to help out with tree carrying and lifting is so nice. You know, he can carry three times the groceries I can in one trip.
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| "I just want one picture and then I'll take him." |
Those strong sons are also good at holding baby brothers. And making the baby brothers smile:
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| Daniel, I see you under there. Get out! |
While the tree was getting set up, there was chaos everywhere. Everyone was talking (shouting) at once, asking the same questions over and over. They wanted candy canes. They wanted cocoa. They wanted milk in their cocoa. Where is their stocking? Can they hang it up yet? Where are the decorations? People started getting a little overwhelmed and cranky. But then I realized that this chaos is the essence of Large Family FUNctioning.
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| Watch for falling cocoa! |
I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to decorate. Something was
preventing me from executing my normal decorating routine, but now I
can't remember what it was. But we did trim the tree because whatever it was that was preventing us stopped what it was doing. And as ornaments were pulled out of the box, I got to say, "Remember the year the tree fell over?" and "Remember last year when Ian cut off the top of the Christmas tree because the star wouldn't stand straight and you got really mad at him but his cut job was actually good?" and...
"Remember the year we had to get TWO trees?" Why did we have two trees? I can't believe I didn't blog about it. Shame on me. So, the Cubmaster from our Cub Scout pack five years ago had "connections" and could get us some "trees that were 6-8 feet tall" that we could sell for "$15 and make a huge profit because they were donated." Turned out we had to pay for them, they were 4-5 feet tall, and no one would buy them because the professional tree stands had better looking trees for cheaper. We bought two trees that year because we felt bad.
This year is going to be the "Remember the year that we didn't use a gate around the tree with a bunch of kids who can't keep their hands off the tree?" year. I also just let the kids put the ornaments where they wanted. We have a crystally ornament section, a section with just Shane's ornaments, and a SpongeBob section.
It will be an absolute miracle if the ornaments survive. But that's okay. We'll make more. And we'll say, "This lone ball is left over from
the project we did in 2008 and we were
snowed in... Remember that?"
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| Peek-a-boo! |
In years past, it has taken a lot of fooling with camera settings to get a glowy picture of our tree lights. This year? Set in on auto, no flash. Bam.
