Carrying on a Christmas Tradition

When I was little we had a quite a few family traditions around the holidays, but the one I loved the most was our small Christmas tree.  No, the small tree was not our attempt to bond with Charlie Brown.  In fact, we had two trees - the main big Christmas tree in our living room that was our family tree and another table top tree downstairs that was just for me and my sister.  

I loved that little tree.  Me and my sister decorated the little tree however we wanted, but it usually consisted of the wide variety of homemade ornaments that we collected over our lifetime.  One of our other holiday traditions was making a handmade gift (usually and ornament) with our Mom.  But the real excitement came on Christmas morning.  After our upstairs presents were opened and our breakfast was over we would run downstairs to see if Santa left us anything under our tree.  We must have been good because he always did!  And, the present he left for us under the tree was always the gift that we REALLY wanted that year.  I still remember the excitement I felt running down the step to see if Santa remembered our tree downstairs.  

This year we decided to continue this tradition with the girls and tonight we put up our 4' artificial tree.  Chris was OK with bringing in a fake tree - one that GASP! has lights built onto it already - since we will continue our own tradition of visiting a Christmas tree farm to hunt down the perfect tree that Chris will chop down and will promptly take over as the focal point of our upstairs living space (our house is pretty small so that is easy to do!).  My Mom gave the girls a tree earlier this week and Julia was so excited to get the tree up and put on a few decorations.  The special decorations that went on the tree were ornaments the girls made at the paint your own pottery place a couple of weeks ago.  The place called to let us know the ornaments were ready so we picked them up today and it seemed like a great day to put up the tree. 

Emma was all smiles and laughter and didn't want to be contained in any seat at all so we put her in the KidWalk and she kept her spot by the tree.  Julia put on many of the ornaments because Emma was more interested in taking them off than putting them on.  Julia kept showing Emma how to put on the ornaments - especially the sparkly balls that she kept calling light bulbs.  I told her several times they were called balls but she kept calling them light bulbs without missing a beat and telling Emma all about the light bulbs.  It was so funny!  Emma managed to pull the tree over and catch it in the KidWalk and Julia promptly came to her rescue (not so sure Emma wanted such prompt help) and set the tree back on the ground properly.  

I'm so happy we are bringing the girls Christmas tree tradition into our family.  I wonder if Santa will remember to put some great gifts under the tree this year?  I'll be sure to tell him how good the girls were and point him in the direction of the little tree in case he has some special gifts in his bag.