We were still able to manage having a Christmas tree when we had 5 kids, even 6, but that 7th one did us in! No longer were ornaments beautiful, shiny, balls reflecting light off the branches. No, they were now weapons, and dodge balls, and even baseballs. The strings of lights we delicately placed as to not leave any bare spots were now sagging from being pulled on.
The water for the tree had become a baby doll bathtub for #4 so that was the first thing to go. We tried again a few years back, but Janelle was allergic so that ideas gone forever. That would have been oh about 2006 or so. Still we held on to those ornaments and just switched to all wood and plastic....plastic breaks too. We gave up ornaments 2 years ago. Thankfully they make prelit artificial trees or we wouldn't even have lights!
Now last year my friend who has triplets was a genus and surrounded her tree with baby gates. I was like THAT'S IT! We can have a real, beautiful, perfect, color coordinating tree again. A magazine worthy piece of art in our living room. Then Dave reminded me that this was our children we were talking about and they can find a way to get a bottle of nail polish off the top of the fridge to paint each other. Point taken our kids are monkeys.
This year however. I wanted something special. I told Dave I was going out to find the most beautiful tree topper I could find. Something that would make people stop and say WOW! Then no one would notice the lack or ornaments, garland, and ribbon...right? So we're at the fifth store we checked (walmart of course, should have checked there first) and there it is on the top shelf a big snowflake and I was like DAVE, do you want to build a snowman. All I could think of was Frozen and how much happiness that movie brings our five year old. SO instead of a beautiful, classy tree topper that would match my other decor I went home with the big, blue snowflake that clashed with everything else. I knew it would make her smile and it did.
It took forever to get that snowflake to sit right. The darn thing was so heavy, but Sara managed to get it up there and I heard Mathew proclaim it's perfect. Yeah buddy, it sure is. We don't need the ribbon, the tinsel, the ornaments. This is our tree and it reflects us perfectly. One day I'm sure I'll have a magazine worthy tree again, but right now I have the perfect one and it makes my kids smile. In the end that's what really matters.
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