Christmas Tree Question

Amazingly, we got our tree up this year on the day after Thanksgiving. I have been enjoying it a lot. I am not tired of it in the least. Here are my questions:
When do you or your family put up your Christmas tree? How long is too long for it to be up? Do you use colored or white lights? Is it eclectictically decorated or does it have a style? My answers are:
1: Shortly after Thanksgiving.
2: More than one month is too long.
3: Colored lights (for the first time ever in my adult life).
4: Eclectic (ever since the children arrived).

p.s. If you are one who does not celebrate Christmas, please don’t slam me for talking about Christmas trees. Just pass on by my blog.

life

Our baby has been sick with the flu this week. Some may have seen Mark’s blog about it, so I thought I would say here that she is on the upswing. I think in a few more days she’ll be back to normal.

Charis’s sickness caused us to cancel participation in our town’s tour of homes that I mentioned a few posts back. It was a good decision, as I am now feeling a bit wimpy myself, and the tour is scheduled for tonight.

We’re busy with life, but one encouraging thing has happened. We found a new babysitter who seems to have a fairly available schedule. Since we have lived here, babysitters have been hard to come by. We’re hopeful this is the beginning of getting out together sans children a bit more often.

In other news, we have purged the toybox. This is hard to do with 3 children insisting that every toy you choose to get rid of is extra special. But after the initial painful separation, they seem to forget it ever happened. It is so healthy to get rid of extra “stuff.” In addition to providing more space in your home, every time you do it is an opportunity to thank God for His goodness to us. Just so you know, I have purged some things from our closet, too, and I plan to keep it up over the coming weeks. So we aren’t just subjecting the children to the great clutter removal.