The best way to nap...

By treelight.

Jordan and I put up our tree this afternoon. It's a sad little Charlie Brown tree at only 6.5 feet, artificial, and see-through, but it doesn't bother us much. "It'll look better once the sun goes down," Jordan pointed out. And yes--it does look better in the dark (but don't we all?).

Christmas before last we were renting an old historical home with 12-foot ceilings, and I insisted on having a giant tree. I felt a small tree would be dwarfed by the house's size and architectural presence. We really couldn't afford to buy a new artificial tree tall enough, so I was overjoyed to find a 9.5 foot tall one for $15 at a yard sale months in advance. It was ginormous. It's hard to describe the girth of a tree that height. It looked like it belonged in a forest, not our house. I was pregnant and just getting over my morning sickness that December, so decorating a tree of that size seemed almost unattainable. Jordan set it up and strung the lights, and it took forever to fully decorate. We didn't even have enough ornaments to cover it, and the job wasn't finished until two or three days before Christmas. The thing was so hard to put up we just couldn't face taking it down, so... We left it up until March.

Lesson learned. It's a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree for us from now on. I can reach up and put the topper on without even standing on my toes. Decorating it takes 15 minutes flat. And you know, it's not the size of the tree that matters anyway. It's who you decorate it with.