o, christmas tree

there's just something about a christmas tree that makes me smile. i love switching on the lights as soon as i get up, and i love the smell of a real tree in our little house. i grew up with only artificial trees, so i have especially enjoyed having real trees in our home each year. one of my most favorite memories of our christmas tree is from christmas 2006, when caroline was a newborn. she and i spent her middle-of-the-night feedings cozied up under a blanket in the living room with only the christmas lights shining. boy, that sure made 2 AM a much more pleasant time to be awake!

i'm not very good at branching out and doing different things with the tree. our tree pictures from year to year look pretty much the same, as i am addicted to the old-fashioned look with red being the dominating color (shocker for those of you that really know me!). i did experiment with stringing up garland for the first time this year, which i hope to get better at in the years to come!! after three re-adjustments of the garland, brian and i decided it was a skill to be mastered and that this year was not the year to master it. :)

the kids' ornaments for this year don't really carry with them a story of significance, but they sure are cute, and the kids loved them. since ethan is into all things transportation, the little wooden airplane was a very fitting choice for him this year. during the past month, he could be found standing by the tree, spinning the little propeller on his airplane. :)


for caroline's ornament, we chose a small snowglobe that is a cookie on the bottom and has a little gingerbread girl inside. she is into baking and cooking in her little kitchen, and who doesn't love snowglobes?! she was allowed to shake the snowglobe as long as it stayed on the tree, so i was accustomed to seeing the whole tree shake as caroline obediently played with her ornament. :)


our family ornament for this year was indeed a special one. the sonogram frame ornament was a little bigger than i'd expected, but it still made me smile every time i passed by it. amelia's little face just lit up the tree even more... we surely are praying, dreaming, and waiting for her!


we usually enjoy our christmas tree until around new year's, but we had to abruptly take down our tree this past weekend. after noticing a few mosquitoes lying around our living room floor and on furniture, brian took a closer look at the base of our tree to find hundreds and hundreds of baby bugs feasting on the trunk of our beautiful christmas tree. our tree skirt had become the final resting place for hundreds of dead mosquitoes...or they were babies who had not yet woken up (sorry, i'm not gil grissom... i'm sure there's more technical terms for this stuff!). whatever stage they were in, we did NOT want them in our living room! especially if they were babies about to turn into adults!!!! i didn't even want to think about how many bugs were in the tree base. so much for our relaxing saturday evening... we had to carefully remove all of the ornaments without disturbing the tree too much, and then we had to figure out how to get the tree out the door without spilling the bug-infested water all over the place. it was quite a scene, i am sure. oh to have been a fly (or mosquito!) on the wall... we finally got the tree out the door, after pathetically attempting to cover it to contain the bug masses. we had to laugh at the sight in our driveway. our poor tree... once decorated with excitement and joy now looked as if it was ready for execution. we successfully got rid of all the bugs, and we're still pondering how we can prevent this next year. we've had real trees every year, but we've never had this problem. of course, it was a very humid 75 degrees on christmas morning, and the whole week was pretty much just as warm. combine that with a bowl of standing water, and you've got a five star resort for bugs. we also discovered that the mosquitoes brought some friends... there were also tons of aphids and some other type of bug that we have yet to identify. anyway, we're assuming that when we bought our tree, some bug larvae or egg sacs or something were thrown in for free. since it never really got that cold here, the bugs thrived instead of died. YUCK. as we were cleaning up the mess, i was trying to decide if i'd rather be doing that or shoveling 2 feet of snow...

anyway, sorry if that grosses you out. i'm itching like crazy as i write this. i'm curious to hear if anyone else has had that problem, especially those of you who had the same warm december that we did. my love for real trees has not wavered, despite the many warm thoughts i had on saturday night toward artificial trees... i'm sure we'll still get a real tree next year, and we'll shake it like crazy before bringing it inside!