The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree...Belated!

This blog is slightly late...please forgive my tardiness. I decided that spending time with family, preparing for Christmas, and attending a bazillion Christmas parties was more important than blogging. I was right!

We have thoroughly enjoyed this Christmas season. I have found myself more and more enamoured...yes, enamoured with the Old Testament during this last month. I have always KNOWN that Christ was born at Christmas time and that He came to save us all from spending eternity in the pit of Hell, but it wasn't until this Christmas season that I became more aware of the Lineage of Christ and what Christ's coming meant to His chosen people. Amazing!!!

Naturally, that's not what this post is about!

When I was 8 years old I received a book from my Great Grandma Hawley...she died the following Thanksgiving. Apart from the way her apartment smelled and that she had a tub of giant, colorful cat's eye marbles in her hall closet that I would play with when we would visit, I don't really remember a whole lot about her. Opposed to the memories I have of Great Grandma, I have many many memories of reading the book she gave me. It was called The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston. The story is a little girl named Ruthie and takes place in the Appalachian Mountains during WWII. Ruthie's papa gets called away to war, but before he goes they go up to the rocky craigs and tie one of Ruthie's hair ribbons to the tip tip top of a balsam tree that they are to take to the church for Christmas. The author writes so vividly, and while the illustrations are great, they aren't necessary!

As I became a woman and as the desire to become a mother grew, my desire to read this book to my children escalated. It got so bad that there were even a few Christmas seasons that I made Jason listen while I read it out loud! Once again, he's a good sport ;)

In 2003 the author gave the town Spruce Pine, North Carolina the rights to this book as a gift. The town had suffered severe economic trouble due to outsourcing. Her gift grew as others joined. A website has been built in an effort to help this small town and the surrounding county. If you have a second, visit their website here...it really is awesome what they're doing!

This year Micah was old enough to sit through the entire story. I read it to him a couple of times. Both times I cried, the first time I nearly lost it, the second time I kept my composure a little better. I was crying for two reasons, 1-the book is great, and makes me cry almost every time I read it, and 2-I was overwhelmed with the blessings the Lord has given me and so thankful for the opportunity to have this 'dream' fulfilled!

Micah was also old enough to enjoy the process of picking out the Christmas tree, decorating it, and enjoying it all season long. The following are pictures of the day we went to get our tree. We loaded the boys up shortly after we all got up. It was chilly, so we didn't even bother changing them out of the jammies...it was great!!!

Gotta love that smile!

We found a small, but beautiful Christmas tree at Menard's. The boys were still pretty oblivious to what we were doing.

I think this was taken the next day, when we decorated it. Jude did surprisingly well with the Christmas tree. I think it helped that it wasn't particularly fun to touch!

Micah LOVED helping Jason tighten the tree stand. He got his Handy Manny pliers and 'tightened' the screws. It was too cute! We concluded that our Christmas tree had scoliosis; no matter how much we tightened it and tried to straighten it, it was still crooked!

Awwww! Priceless!

Christmas Day....well, actually the 23rd. We left that day for KC, so we opened our stockings early. For a few years Jason and I have just gotten each other things that fit in our stockings. Some of it was a financial decision, but moreover we decided we don't NEED anything. We have decided to continue this tradition with our children. As they get older we may decide to do gifts, but right now they get plenty of gifts from family. AND We want Christmas to be about celebrating the birth of our Savior and not about getting, getting, getting.

We let Micah put a few of the wooden and metal ornaments on the tree! It was so fun!

We hope that your Christmas was filled with blessings and love!