UNdecorating

I always dread taking my Christmas decorations down after "the Season to be Jolly" has passed. I'm a Christmas decorator and I have decorations in every single room. To be honest, it's a major chore to get my house back to normal. Once I pack away my decorations from each room, I'll begin in the living room. I'll tediously take each ornament off the tree. By the time I've packed these ornaments away, I find myself yanking the lights off hoping and praying I don't break the wire or the tiny light bulbs. I then pack each Santa away... carefully turning them...eyeing them...checking the bottom for a worn price tag to see if it was a 1/2 price Santa and then lovingly wrapping them! Once those are packed away, I "de-mantle" my mantle! Each clear globe/glass dome that covered the pine cones that were perching atop silver baby cups are wrapped with white tissue paper and placed in their plastic tomb til next Christmas. Now, I like to leave my snowmen out until at least February. Snowmen are NOT Christmas decor! They are winter decor! I'm quite adamant about that, BUT this year I was on a roll and I sadly packed my little white snowmen away with the....Christmas decorations. One reason I did this was so I would know where and what was packed!

Last year after the first of the year rolled around, I came home from school to find all my decorations down and packed. Donald had worked all day to get this done for me. I couldn't believe he had done this for me! Now I know I have lots of decorations but I think he had to buy about 5 more of those plastic storage boxes to get everything packed. I couldn't figure out why he used so many boxes! This year I began to unpack for Christmas and I realized why so many more boxes had been used. I just don't think men know how to pack like women do! He had labeled (over my labels) each box with masking tape (torn with ragged edges...not cut). I began opening each box and was amazed at what I found. One box was full of kitchen towels! I had wondered where my Christmas tea towels were! The next box I opened was....well what was this? It was brown...it had needles on it... was that the faint aroma of pine I could smell? OH MY....Bless his heart (my momma always said you could say anything you wanted to about someone if you said "Bless his heart" before you said it)....He had packed a cut/live Norfolk Pine centerpiece...complete with a candle in the center! One of my friends had given it to me as a gift last year! I had assumed he had thrown it away, since I knew the branches would eventually die! He had used one large plastic bin for this "soon to die" table topper! I laughed and laughed when I found this! Upon inspecting other boxes, I was sure I could have "crammed" several more objects in them! But the table topper was just too funny!

After I found that I vowed that I would make sure I packed my Christmas goodies myself or at least kept an eye on my "helper"! I used about 5 fewer boxes this year than we used last year. And I don't think I packed any live (soon to die) center pieces! I left the lights, tree, packed boxes and outside decorations for Donald to store and he did a wonderful job! He is very organized and he put everything away very neatly!

So now I'm ready for a new year....and hopefully next Christmas, I'll know exactly what I've stored in each of my neatly labeled boxes!

Christmas and The Nutcracker

Denver, Madilyn and Averi after seeing The Nutcracker in Austin on Sunday afternoon. Do you think the kids were a little exhausted after sitting through the ballet? Can you tell they are working hard on posing??? My sister and her daughters, Bonnie and Brianna; Gina, Denver and Averi; Hillary and Maddie,;Cari (Tristin got to stay with his daddy!) and I all went to see the ballet! The kids looked adorable and we all had a wonderful time. We drove back to Cari's in Buda afterwards and we let Averi open some of her birthday gifts.

Wishing all a Merry Christmas!