THE PRETTIEST TREE EVER

December 18, 2019

There probably isn't a year that we've decorated a tree when we didn't stand back at the end and realize this was the prettiest tree ever.  This tree might definitely be in the running...

It had been several years since we had a big tree...and several years since Ned and Marta had one, so this was a big deal, starting our "10 year project." This was to be both a "decorating" evening and a "get rid of" evening, since we were all choosing which ornaments to keep forever and which could be discarded.

Ned set everything up and when I went into the living room, the tree was up, the ornaments were laid out on a table, another table had glasses, brandy, and egg nog, and Bing Crosby was playing on the radio.  I found it rather....endearing... that he set it all up for us.

Almost all of our ornaments are "special."  None of the glass balls, but they all have some history to them, like this one

One Christmas, after several years of hosting foreign students, I made a whole set of ornaments, each with a picture of one of our students.  Most of the people I have lost contact with, but we decided to put up ornaments of the "special ones," about 6 or 7 of them.   This is Jane, from England, who was here, maybe in 1981?  We saw her several times, here in this country and in England and then three years ago, her daughter came to stay for a few weeks, and came back a second year.  She would have come this year too, but now we no longer have a spare room.  But Jane's ornament made the tree along with others like Eduardo, Marcio, Nelson and Sonia (all from Brasil), Felix (from Yugoslavia) and a few others.

Of course there were what I call the "necropsy ornaments," memories of Paul (the smiley beads), David (the black leather jacket), and our dog Seymour (her tennis ball).  Collars of two other dogs are on the other side of the tree.

And of course Spock, because it isn't Christmas until you've been wished "Happy Holidays" by a Jewish Vulcan.  Next to the Enterprise audio ornament is a "live" Spock our friend Jessica brought to us last night.

I was going to cook chicken for dinner, but Ned decided that we should have pizza so nobody had to cook. He ordered a pizza, which we ate while we decorated, and Polly, ever hopeful, watched every bite that went into Walt's mouth.

Bouncer was not particularly happy about posing under the tree.  Unfortunately, Ned was the one who got  the "good" picture...but this one is OK.

So the house is decorated and we are closer and closer to calling the house "finished."  We can even park the car in the carport now...it's a tight squeeze to open the door against the few boxes that remain, but we're close.

And during the day, Ned has removed the rug under the tree and replaced it with a fence to keep Polly from peeing on the presents!