O Christmas Tree

I hadn't had a real tree in YEARS (since I was maybe in grade-school) so I decided this year to get one! I've hated my artificial one for the last couple of years but we keep thinking "we'll be in a new house next year" so I haven't wanted to buy a new one yet, not knowing for sure the space & ceiling height. I'd even thought I wouldn't do a tree at all this year since we'd be going to WA for Christmas, but that isn't very fun when you have little kids! So while Jeremiah was out of town (hunting, of course!) I took the kids to Home Depot & got a $20 little 4-ft tree. I'm SO glad I did! It was fun having a cute little good-smelling tree. I almost want to do it every year, even after we end up getting a new artificial one. And another thing, I love a nicely decorated formal Christmas tree & I've been thinking about the hand-made decorations that are soon to come & I know I'm anal but it would just be hard for me to do that to a formal tree! So I think that the decorations we used this year (got them mostly on clearance after Christmas last year) will go nicely on a family tree with all our sentimental & handmade stuff. I predict that next year we'll likely be too house-poor to buy a big new tree anyway! The kids had a great time helping decorate the tree. And then after we were done the kids rearranged ornaments every day until we left for WA! I also kept finding toys stuffed deep in the branches (Jack), and one day even his shoe! And another day Jack showed me that his toys were swimming - in the tree stand! And to know that it'll still be years of trying to keep little hands out of the tree branches! I know some people just don't decorate the bottom, but that wouldn't stop my children! Almost daily I found them with stools or anything else they could find to stand on to rearrange stuff higher up! And the tree wasn't very tall in the first place!