O Christmas Tree

Ever since we put our tree up a few weeks ago, Tyson has been begging and pleading to decorate it.  But with Thanksgiving and family visiting and then Tim working late every night last week, we just haven’t had the time.  Finally, over this past weekend, Tim got down all the boxes of ornaments and we let the kids go at it.  I’m not sure it could have been any more chaotic as all three kids were opening bins and digging out ornaments.  There was lots of oohing and aahing over all the different ornaments.  A few got dropped.  Several got thrown.  And one very fragile ball got squeezed to death.  I lost track of how many ornaments got injured in the decorating process, but oh well.  Most of them can be salvaged with a little hot glue.  It really didn’t matter to me anyway.  It was a lot of fun to have all of the kids getting into it this year.  Even Hudson was quick to catch the excitement and jump in on the fun.  

 

Besides moving a few breakable ornaments up higher on the tree, I really didn’t have anything to do with the placement of ornaments this year.  The kids basically did it all and it’s very obvious when you look at our tree.  There are spots that are completely bare and then spots that are overloaded with ornaments.  In the past, I would have discreetly rearranged everything after the kids finished.  I would have hid the hideous ornaments in the back or removed them all together and displayed the nicer looking ones in the front.  But this year, for some reason, our imperfect tree isn’t bothering me.  In fact, I kind of like it.  This year, when I look at our tree, I can see the beauty in it.  And I find joy in all those imperfections.

There is a kind of beauty in imperfection. -Conrad Hall