Not 500 More, Not 700 More, but 600 More Lights Dangit!!!

So me, Mike and the kids were at my mom and dad's house yesterday and Mike and dad, of course, are yappin about football and upcoming games they're going to, and I'm with mom, looking at old ornaments and I realized something. I'm so old. First of all, I was born in the 70's. WHA? Its like almost the second decade in the 21's century. Some of those ornaments were dusty and ancient and yeah, gross.

So dad and Mike go out and get their new tree. See, they put up two trees every year, one in the formal living room for my dad. He's VERY particular to how it looks, so he does it himself. Its only got white lights (that's how I like mine too) and only has gold or white ornaments. Its got ribbon in it and white pointsettias and to be honest, I'm not really a "gold" tree girl but it is stunning. Dad has immaculate taste, and its really beautiful.

My mom gets the tree that goes in the family room. Hers is colorful and huge and she puts all of the better looking old ornaments on it, colored lights and tiny apples and all that jazz. But this year they gave us that tree, the big fat one that goes in the family room. So she and my dad went to buy another one and they came home with a monster. ITS HUUUGE! Seriously, its probably 12 feet high. They put it up, and start putting lights on it and finally realize that it came with lights but my dad wanted MORE lights, so they put more on it.

"This tree needs at LEAST 600 more lights!" he kept saying. "Yes, 600 more!"

Why 600? I have no idea. Whatever, he's pretty eccentric, but we love him. He's really happy these days and if 600 lights make him happier, then hell, I'll be the first one to hand 'em over.

When all was said and done, there was our tree, FINALLY finished last night, mom and dad's two trees and I remembered why it's so nice to have a fake tree. Poseable branches. All 3 of our trees are gorgeous. I'll post pics.

Oh, so this dude I know, he and his wife put CANDLES on the branches of their tree. A real tree. With real fire. Hello? Anybody else do that? What are your Christmas tree traditions?

P.S.

Oh and to all of you who are in the "friends and family" group on flickr, I put up tons more pics of Casey and Jonah helping me decorate the tree. Oh and there are about 100 of Kenzie playing guitar. You know Tiff, she hides from the camera, but I sneaked in a few for this week. She's more interested in this dude from our church right now, so she's not really into guitar as much as she was last week.