Productive weekend

On Saturday, we got up early and began putting up the outdoor Christmas decorations. Just to make the task a bit more challenging, the weather decided to turn hot and windy. Have you ever tried to secure an 8-foot tall blow-up Santa in gusty winds with nothing but a 34 pound kid to help you? I swear I had visions of him floating up into the sky, hanging onto Santa for dear life! (Chris was on the ladder hanging the house lights and mumbling dark words....) We had Max and Jackson out with us and Jackson decided to drop a huge pile of poo right where I wanted to put the angels (Upwind of us of course. Do you know how big a poo pile comes from a 120 pound dog? Yuck!). I placed large plastic candy canes all along the walkway, and while I wasn't looking Levi pulled them out and used them to whap the daylights out of Santa. I got the large blow-up Noel sign tethered and turned on when I realized it was backwards and read 'leoN'. (Leon, the Christmas dude, one of the lesser know wisemen.) Then while I was trying to get the power cords all hooked up, Levi dis-assembled 2 spiral trees so he could use the poles to play Ninja. When I was fussing and fuming, he sweetly looked at me and said, 'Mama, don't be so frustrated.' I had to laugh at that! Seven hours and one trip to Home Depot later and we are sufficiently lit up to be on the Non-Grinchy list.
Then yesterday I tackled the indoors. Being the Christmas-loving sap that I am, I decided that this year we would not place the tree upstairs, where it can safely reside thru the holidays, but instead I re-arranged the living room and placed the tree right in the middle of the action zone. It is covered with over 1400 lights and a myriad of unbreakable ornaments. I know it will get re-arranged many times between now and New Years, but I want to be able to enjoy it. We did place a kiddie fence around it to slow the attacks. Levi is pretty good, he may re-hang some ornaments, but I told him he can.
That reminds me of the story of the 'designer' tree we had for a while when I was growing up. (Dana and Joel, you remember it!) Mom was the wife of a young executive. She belonged to the bridge club and a ladies club. She had her hair styled weekly into the popular beehive and she always wore a dress. One year, from a magazine or something, she got the idea that we needed a designer tree. No more random ornaments or hand-made goodies. No more icicle tinsel and fat colorful lights. Instead she worked diligently to create the perfect tree. Fuzzy balls of gold, green and burnt orange, gold twinkle lights, coordinated ropes of garland and real candles (which could NOT be burned, they were for show!). Us kids didn't even get to decorate it. We got our own little tree in the basement to go all Charlie Brown with. The perfect tree was placed in the living room in front of the huge picture windows. Our tree was the envy of all the neighbor ladies. It really looked like it belonged in Home and Garden. Unfortunately, us kids didn't really appreciate it and after a number of years the designer tree was packed away and we once again had the eclectic, randomly decorated tree. Sorry Mom, your tree really was beautiful!