Let the Holiday Season Begin

I have always been a Christmas guy. Blame it on my mother who would blare Christmas carols at the first sign of a snowflake or if she had to go into the refrigerated section in Costco. I enjoy the decorations, the music, the food, the giftgiving, and everything else. A utopian moment for Brett is to sit in a room decorated for Christmas while listening to some of the softer Chip Davis music (the kind that does not sound like 1980s Jazzercise) while watching the snow fall outside.

With that, it should be no surprise that with my new house have a 20 foot ceilings I went for the Clark Griswold special Christmas tree (san squirrel thank goodness) and I did find a place to stick a tree that big.  With the new tree came new decor and new decorating challenges.  Fortunately, the best spot for the tree was right next to the staircase where we could stretch out and just catch a branch, though there was precarious perching going on.

Even Ronin's little arms could reach the tree, though he preferred to hang most ornaments in tightly packed clusters and on the Christmas light wires.  Remarkably, no glass ornaments were broken.

All of the kids were a great help to each other.  Notice the concentration on Locke's face with his tongue sticking out of his mouth in the traditional Hansen concentration style (I would do the same  while playing hockey and it was a miracle that I never bit my tongue off).

We had lots of ornaments that were buried deep inside long boxes. Unfortunately, this does not work well for things with short arms like T-Rexs and Charlottes.

I broke out the latter and let the kids perch themselves as precariously as possible.  Don't worry I keep back up kids around at all times.

I believe Ronin is trying to hang his ornament from the ribbon. I guess all of the light wiring was fully loaded at this point.

The big boys were lots of help. 

I will say that after picking out the ornaments, the ribbon, and the lights then supervising my crew of five kids in setting up all the decorations and fussing about the arrangement and balance of all of the décor, I felt like the gayest straight-man in Utah County  (the glaze of Christmas glitter all over my skin and the shopping trip Michael's did not help the matter).

 

Despite having the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in our family room, Ronin still found the most fun messing around with our ceramic village. A Hansen boy tradition since 1999.  

With life as an adult being overwhelmingly challenging sometimes, I always love the simplicity and innocence of Christmas in both its religious and secular forms.

 

 

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 [Again this post was dictated with Dragon software  and I put all responsibility for any typos , word choices,  weird punctuation spacing ,  or random  double spaces between words -as seen here- squarely on their shoulders  and I am blasted tired  of fixing their snafus in this post.  Thanks 800,000 - I would thank Dragon a million, but it is only 80% accurate in Explorer.]