A Tale of Two Trees

There is a comedian my brothers and I like to quote named Mitch Hedberg, and he has this joke where he says: people always ask me how to get a hold of me and I respond, I can’t tell you where I’m staying, but there are two trees involved.

This blog post reminded me of that joke… anyway, moving on.  I’ve shown you some of my favorite of mom’s nativities… and some of the weirder ones, but she doesn’t end her Christmas decorating with the nativities.  At my mom’s house there have always been two Christmas trees: one fancy one and one ‘family friendly one’.  But both are real trees.

To this day she still has both trees and I love each one in their own way.

The fancy one is always done in white lights and all crystal and gold decorations.  Mom taught me as a young child that this tree was for looking only.  In fact she used to say (and I would repeat and being the bossy person I am, instruct others to do so as well), “Pretty pretty, no touch”.  My mom would always call it out in that tone that only mother’s can achieve: sing songy, yet carries an underlying threat.  Yep, you know the one.

Anyway, back to my mom’s beautiful tree:

In her current house this one sits upstairs and has mostly crystal and glass ornaments.  For this one she usually finds trees that are more unique , like the one for this year, a little sparse, but it has more character.

The star is a recent addition from Halls in Kansas City… isn’t it gorgeous?!

The other tree in the house has tons of special memories for me.  It always has colored lights and is fun and playful.  This was the tree we decorated as a family.

And it is full of a lifetime of memories and all of the ornaments that come from countless Mother’s Day out programs.  See how cute I was?

And I’m totally sure my mom meant for me to have my white cardigan buttoned all the way up to the top for school pictures. 🙂

I love the idea of two trees so that (one day when I have kids) I can have my well decorated tree, but still give my kids the freedom to decorate with plastic baggie angels that I’ll keep until they are almost in their 30s and yes that’s what is in the background of the photo above.

Christmas is just around the corner… are you ready?

I should mention that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree… neither my mother nor I have a single wrapped present under our tree.  Nothing like a last minute wrapping spree!!