Advent Day 6 :: Decorate the tree, originally uploaded by earthchick.

This was the first year that the boys were truly a help and not an impediment to this activity. Not only did we get the tree decorated in record time (other than lights, which I put up a couple of nights earlier), but we had a great time together doing this as a family. It was fun to see the boys pull out ornaments and remember them from years past. We also broke the first glass ball of the season; it was nice to get that out of the way.

I have a very specific soundtrack I always play during the tree-decorating, starting with Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas album and moving to Shawn Colvin’s Holiday Songs and Lullabies (I LOVE that album), before moving on to other albums. But at one point, the boys took a little break to look through Christmas books, and they found this book of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and they began to sing.

I turned off the album and stopped to listen (and of course capture the moment). It was so sweet (see video at the end of this post – I captured the last verse).

Here’s our tree, waiting for its topper. We’re having a little disagreement about what will go on top. Little Buddha really wants us to use the star we usually use (a gold Moravian star, matching some of the ornaments on the tree), but it is difficult to balance and I’m kind of tired of trying to make it work. I’d been thinking of just going with a big red bow on top. Little Buddha protests, “But that’s not even in the Christmas story! There’s a star, and there’s an angel, which people also put on top of their trees, but there’s no bow!” This is true.

I have to say, I always figured that the youngest years with children would be the most precious, especially when it came to the “magic” of the holidays. But eight years old turns out to be a pretty sweet age, and I am trying to savor it.