MOSAIC MOMENTS

Gone are the days when Santa came to our house on Christmas Eve. My children are growing up, too fast for my liking, and today when we decorated our Christmas tree, I asked the boys if they wanted to include our “fun” decorations like we always do.

I have two boxes of Christmas ornaments. One box has red and white balls and red ribbons. The other box is filled with rocking horses, snow men, santa’s, pictures of the children when they were young, and all those wonderful handmade ornaments that have been made by each of them throughout the years. This, is the “fun” box.

They both quickly protested, saying that those ornaments were ugly and childish.

My face must have dropped, because Garrett, the intuitive one, quickly said, “It’s OK Mom, We can put them on if you want.”

I did want to put them on. If anything, but for nostalgia. But, I told him “No”, that it was OK and I thought the tree looked fine the way it was.

I always had this wonderful vision of decorating our Christmas tree together, each of us blissfully happy and singing Christmas carols together.

This…. is a “vision” I wonder if anyone really does that with more than one child in the house?

We have an artificial tree, because I am terribly allergic and after years of suffering from the tightening of my airway and the swelling of my throat, my dear husband told the boys that it was either their Mom or the Tree.

They choose the tree!

Thankfully, Glenn put his foot down and said that my breathing was far more important and after all…. a Christmas tree wont do your laundry!

So, the boys put the tree together. I tried to not help, remembering last year when I did my back was out for days.

I put The Grinch That Stole Christmas on TV. This will get us all in the Christmas spirit!

or so I thought….

The boys continued to yell at each other about how to put the tree together.

They changed the TV to a stand-up comedian that they like. Their argument–It was a Christmas special! 

I tried to sing a Christmas carol….

They told me to stop singing.

With the tree finally up, and the limbs taken off and replaced in the correct slots, it was time to put on the lights.

The boys don’t really know about light placement, so I decided to put them on myself.

Garrett crawled into the Christmas tree box and kept yelling, “You can’t see me!”

This was cute when he was four….. he’s TWELVE and I worried about the integrity of my box!

So, Garrett is in the box, Tim is helping me untangle the lights and Buster (the basset hound that was a Christmas present ‘mistake’ two years ago) is stepping all over the lights!

I told Buster to move…. I had to yell it to be heard over “Mr. You Can’t See Me!”

Buster sat down.

I went to take him by the collar to physically move him off the lights and….

HE BIT ME!

I yelled at Buster, Garrett jumped out of the box.

He wasn’t upset that his poor mother was fatally wounded… He was upset that I was yelling at the dog!

I considered both dog and child abuse….

I opted out and grabbed Buster’s leash and clipped it onto his collar and made Garrett take him out, vowing that he will never return (at least until tomorrow)

I finished the lights and the boys put up the ornaments and I finished with the bows.

So… this year, I don’t have fun stuff on my tree… but that is OK… I have never had that lovely ‘vision’ of the perfect Christmas decorating come true anyway! I guess this year it is time for many changes.

When we were finished I pulled out the candy that is to go into their stockings and we ate some.  

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