Trimming the Tree

Every year, it seems that the time to decorate the Christmas tree comes faster and faster and the boys get bigger and bigger. This year was particularly poignant in that much of the decorating of the tree has become the their job. Yes, I still am a bit controlling about where the hockey player ornaments hang (bottom bows, near the back of the tree), but you know what I noticed? I didn't move the ornaments as much as I have in past Christmas seasons; you know the move: when the kids aren't looking, you surreptitiously move a particularly heavy ornament from a weak and droopy branch to a sturdier one on another part of the tree, or you come down early the next morning and "re-hang" the ornaments where you "really" think they should have gone in the first place, or certain ornaments that were there last year (the scary looking reindeer with one eye missing or the chipped gingerbread man, you know the ones I mean) fail to find their way out of the box. But not this year. This year, the ornaments are staying right where the boys, our growing and busy boys, chose to put them. Our youngest had a conference with my husband about the best place for those hockey players before setting up a scrimmage under a needled roof. Our middle child reached the tallest branches for us. And Jared carried up the heaviest boxes from the basement for me, claiming, "Geez Mom! This isn't heavy at all!" And for him, it wasn't, not anymore, not this year. At one point, Jake asked my husband and me how he would have enough ornaments for his own Christmas tree when he grows up and moves out.  I told him not to worry; ornaments have a way of accumulating over the years. That's the fun part of it.  But it struck us; the boys are growing up. It won't be too many years before they are hanging their own ornaments on a tree that they pick out themselves. I'll probably give them each a hockey player.