Trimming the Tree

Personally, I think the holiday season goes by much too quickly. So here at the Burk household, we like to squeeze out every drop of the festive holidays as we can. While living in DC, we started putting our decorations and Christmas tree up the weekend of Thanksgiving just so we could enjoy them for as long as possible seeing how we left for Utah immediately following Nate's finals. This is a tradition Nate and I decided to keep once we moved to Utah. And as you can see here, it looks like Christmas threw up all over our front room. 

On the way home from Bryce Canyon, we stopped and did a little Black Friday shopping at H&M, and then headed to our favorite "go to" place for Christmas ornaments, Crate & Barrel. Every year we allow our children to pick out their own ornament and then we place their name and the year in which they picked it out. Nate makes fun of me because, in my mind, I have always envisioned my family's Christmas tree like the ones in the catalogs where all the ornaments match and compliment one another. Nate scoffed openly about that idea and asked, "Well, where are we going to put all the Christmas ornaments the kids make out of Popsicles sticks and glitter?" To which I responded, "In a bin, hidden out of sight."

After being accused of being a Grinch and dashing the poor hopes of our not-even school-aged crafting children, we decided that once we had a house big enough, we would get two trees: one with according to Nate, all the "boring, zero creativity, matching ornaments which will be down in the basement where nobody can see it" and the other "awesome tree with paper snowflakes bedazzled with glitter and cotton balled snowmen hanging from the branches, will be prominently displayed in the front room for all the neighbors to enjoy and secretly covet."

What made me think of this conversation you ask? Why, that would be Brynlee's ornament choice this year. She picked an elephant. Whoever thought an elephant was an appropriate object for a Christmas tree ornament should be taken outback behind the woodshed and flogged. I tried to persuade her to get something else, anything else, but she fell in love with that damn elephant. Nate laughed triumphantly and said, "She has made her choice. That's the one she wants." This elephant on my Christmas tree is going to give me anxiety for the next 15 years, I just know it. But maybe, just maybe, years down the road, I will be able to laugh about this.

This being Hudson first year in existence, he officially became a full fledged member of the family when he picked out his first very own Christmas ornament. Thankfully, Hudson chose a cute little fat elf, quite possibly because the round tummy and chubby cheeks reminded him of himself. But that is just a theory.

Now that the tree is trimmed and the decorations are out, we can officially celebrate the commencement of the Christmas season!