The Tree

I have not been feeling the blogging bug much lately. It has been more than two months since I last wrote anything of significance. It is kind of a shame since lots of significance has happened. I want to do a quick little post today so that I can at least have one post for November, and then I've made a commitment to myself to blog a little every day so that I don't miss some of the memories being made. I particularly want to take some time to record some AWESOME memories from October and November that deserve to be chronicled. For now I'm going to blog about my Christmas tree ... just because.

I love Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. And one of the things I love most is my Christmas tree. It's not the fanciest thing in the world. I am not one of those people who have the master decorator touch when it comes to Christmas decorations. My house will not look like a page out of a catalog. But the things in my house do have special significance to me. They matter to me. I am so grateful for the very best and most lasting present we received when we got married. A couple gave us two Christmas ornaments and told us that they had a tradition of getting a special Christmas ornament each year to add to their tree. We decided to take up that tradition ourselves. Each year we purchase a new ornament representing some significant event of that year. We have ornaments for each of the children's births, first days of school, Minsy's adoption and sealing, family vacations, new homes, Herman's jobs, etc. Every year it has been so wonderful to open up the box of ornaments and relive those important moments of our marriage. It warms my heart. Always. Because I love this tradition of ours so much, we always choose to give new couples getting married a beautiful crystal ornament as our gift to them, hoping that they will follow the same tradition.

For Herman's First Year of Teaching Spanish at Waynesville High School 1997

Hyrum's Baby's First Christmas Ornament 2003

Moving into our home on 103 Oakridge 1998

Savannah in braces 2009

With that excellent tradition, I always look forward to putting up our tree every year. We put on some Christmas music, warm up some hot chocolate, and pull out our collection of Christmas decorations, ready to bring on the holidays in style. Normally this happens on Thanksgiving evening, but this year we ran into a snag in our plans because my mom and dad ended up getting into a rather big car accident on their way home from my aunt and uncle's house in Platte City, MO (that'll be the source of another blog post coming soon ... they're okay). Because of the accident and a quick trip to the ER in Rolla we didn't get home until early in the morning on Friday, so there was no way to get our tree decorated that night. On Friday we were pretty exhausted after a horrible night's sleep and a day of Black Friday shopping. That ruled out Friday. We finally took the time to put the tree up last night.

... and it wasn't the happy, happy, joy, joy experience we normally had.

I'm not exactly sure what went wrong, but something did. No one seemed particularly interested in decorating. It was especially like pulling teeth to get Savannah to be involved. She wanted us to have an 'old fashioned' Christmas with no lights on our trees. She wasn't particularly excited to put on ornaments. She didn't seem to want to be involved at all. She wasn't hateful about it or anything. She just wasn't all that enthusiastic. This was so disappointing to me. It isn't quite as fun to decorate when everyone is kind of being stinkers about it.

Savannah and Katie chilling out during the decoration extravaganza

In the afternoon I was driving with Spencer to pick up a tree and decorations for my parents. We were talking about Savannah's stinker attitude about our future decorating event, and Spencer said, "I think that Savannah is just ready to be done with everything." He was talking about how Savannah is ready to move out and move on with her life. As he said that I feel like my eyes were opened a bit to the reality of the situation. As a bishop Herman was always dealing with parents and youth who were in their senior year of high school and going through significant family struggles as the youth started pushing back against the parents in everything. As Herman would talk parents and youth through the situation he talked about the need to separate from our parents and become independent is a natural part of development. It is something that is supposed to happen. These feelings of push back that youth feel is part of the process. The key is trying to figure out how to manage these feelings in a healthy way that doesn't create a giant rift between parents and children but instead helps evolve the relationship from one of total parental involvement to one of more youth independence that will eventually occur as the youth leave home. Anyway .... I started to see Savannah's push against the decorating enthusiasm as more of a result of her growing independence and less of some sort of inherent dislike of family time or Christmas memories. Realizing this helped me to relax about things for the most part, although I was still pretty sad thinking that things would be different as a family yet again. These growing pains ... ugh! They hurt sometimes.

At least Hyrum's got the Christmas decorating spirit!

JoJo doesn't mind being Santa's helper.

Minsy thought that every ornament was one related to an event in her life.

The decorating experience this year was still pretty nice. I love our pretty tree full of memories. I love the excitement that the kids feel as they find "their" ornaments. I love listening to Christmas music and watching cheesy Christmas movies. I love Christmas.

Next year Savannah will probably not be with us for Thanksgiving unless she and Laney choose to fly home for the break. That would be nice, but who knows if it'll work out. It'll probably just end up being Herman and me with five Blau kids around the tree. One of these days in the too near future it'll just be Herman and me sitting around decorating our tree all by ourselves .... and by Herman and me, what I really mean is me. Herman puts up the tree. That is his job. When it comes to loading up the ornaments, he leaves that up to me. I'll do it. I'm sure I'll enjoy it ... to a point. But it sure won't be the same experience as it has been in years past when the kids get so much joy from going through twenty plus years of Blau family memories.

Christmas is a magical time of year for me. So many years of memories and traditions are packed into this month of holiday events. Putting up the tree is only the beginning. Hooray for my wonderful little family and my genuinely good kids. They may not get all enthusiastic about decorating trees any more, but they are truly good kids. I couldn't ask for better. Now I'm off to watch another Christmas classic. What'll it be tonight? I'm feeling like .... Elf.