Monday, December 15, 2008

Tannenbaum

As I mentioned in Sunday's post, this past weekend was the Christmas kickoff at our house. Besides listening to Christmas albums (Rev. Horton Heat -We Three Kings is a favorite this year), putting up lights, and putting together gifts for out-of-town family, we also weathered the frigid cold to bring home the Christmas tree!

This year's tree wasn't the largest, or most symmetrical we have put up in recent years (you get much less critical when the weather is below 2o F, there is a brisk wind, and all the trees are covered with snow). But, thankfully after we arrived home and secured it in the stand, we were satisfied that this was no Charlie Brown tree either.

Mrs. LIAYF, after some pathetic begging on my part, agreed to depart from our White light only policy and add some colored lights into our Noble Fir, "For Luke's sake". Hopefully, the result will convince her that we can go with a technicolor tree next year too. I like the colors. Colors pretty.
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And, in a brilliant move on her part, Mrs. LIAYF also instructed me to hang the crappiest of the ornaments at the bottom of the tree. I, being of narrow mind, hadn't considered this while pondering the perfect placement of our ever growing stash of priceless keepsakes. The wisdom of her ways paid off right away though as Lukas, warned many times against grabbing the ornaments within his reach, couldn't help himself and subsequently damaged several of them in just a couple hours.


I snapped a quick picture of these laid out on my kitchen island. I think I am going to call it the Island of Misfit Ornaments. Most of these simply have missing strings, except the Ice Skating ornament. This one suffered the most damage, and was probably our most cherished of them all (commemorating our first date). I'm confident that it can be fixed though, as Mrs. LIAYF is licensed in Washington to carry a glue gun.
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Not included in the picture is the broken snow globe which we had to discard right away. Nothing says 'good parenting' like your 17 mo. old tugging at your pant leg so he can hand you a jagged chunk of curved, broken glass covered with wet glitter snow.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with the Robot, he just wanted to be a dentist.

10 comments:

Surfer Jay said...

Death to ornament!
I anticipated the formentioned trajedy so we put the tree on top of a fancy cedar chest to keep it mostly out of The Boys reach. Of course I had to chop off the top of the tree so it would fit... 'Sorry Lilly there's no room for your great grandmas absolutley beautiful cracked pink and gold ornament this year.' Bummer...

Dan said...

I like the robot. There should be more robots on Christmas trees in my oppinion

SciFi Dad said...

your wife lets you decide what ornaments go on the tree?!? lucky!

I'm going to try and remember to download that Rev. Horton Heat number later.

Being us... said...

Jake would say "baaalllllll" before he would rip an ornament off of the tree and hurl it across the room. After much coercing he has now decided the tree is no big deal and leaves it alone. But we also have a pretty bare tree from the waist down!

James (SeattleDad) said...

@Jay - Darn, maybe next year on that ornament. Sounds lovely.

@Dan - Robots rule. At least in much of our sci-fi literature.

@Mandy - So, it's not just Lukas? LOL.

@SciFi - I didn't say I got to choose, just that I was told where to put them. Let me know what you think about the RRH album.

Anonymous said...

I hear ya on the colored lights - we are a white light only house. I prepared the wife this weekend for the eventual request. She is in denial.

We did the tree this weekend too. Was an absolute blast. I love this holiday and now with the little one it is that much better.

We have tall ceilings so I have been fighting for a 8 footer. I lost :(

James (SeattleDad) said...

@DC - The colored lights will be for Mini-Kamps sake. Just keep repeating that mantra. I would have done a taller tree, but I had to carry ours home on my shoulder in the elements. Smaller is good sometimes.

FilmFather said...

Ah yes, the Low Hanging of the Crappy Ornaments. With two young boys (5 and 2), I know it well. There are still ornament casualties, but for the most part you can say, "They were expendable..."

My kids asked about the white-lights-only situation on our tree, so we may be going technicolor next year, too...

Thanks for the mention of the Rev. Horton Heat Xmas music. I had no idea! And I do love me some Reverend...

Great blog - I plan to visit often.

(Hey there, Jay - fancy meeting you here!)

Ed (zoesdad) said...

I completely forgot I had the Rev's Christmas Album. My brother-in-law gave me a copy of it last year and it's been in the drawer ever since. Good Stuff!

James (SeattleDad) said...

@Film Father - Thanks for stopping by. The RHH is terrific stuff. I love me some Rev too! The colored lights are Luke's favorites. Just looks at them and says 'Whooooaaa'. Of course that is all that is left after the ornaments have been trashed.

@Ed - I love spreading the good word.