O Christmas Tree

Mike and I finally got around to decorating our Christmas tree today. We actually got the tree last Sunday but have been too busy all week to decorate. For half the week it was lying on our front porch still wrapped up, then we brought it in I think on Thursday and put it on its stand. The tree, of course, fell after we thought it was in there good, and today was finally the day that we were both home and able to decorate, yay!

Mike’s team did a Christmas tree fundraiser this year for his program. They made lots of money and we of course felt like we should get our tree from them. Our family room is small and the smallest sizes they had were 5-6 foot trees. All of the trees were wrapped so we really couldn’t see it until we unwrapped it, but it actually turned out looking nice and fitting perfectly!
So, we put on some xmas tunes, (and a college game on mute) and decorated! Mike put up the lights first for us. He is convinced that the first strand of lights needs to wrap around the tree trunk all the way to the top so the light looks like it’s coming from the “inside of the tree”. I told him that’s a little ridiculous and a waste of the few light strands we have (who wants to make another trip down to longs?) Has anyone else heard of this? He does it every year and it does look nice, maybe that’s the way everyone does it and I have just never noticed…
As we were decorating, I was thinking about our ornaments. I have always wanted a beautiful and “classy” looking tree full of white lights, silver balls, and pretty ornaments. The kind you might see in a Pottery Barn catolog or something. Then I looked at our ornaments…no silver balls (Mike and I can’t help but laugh every time I say that), not too many lights (too lazy to go out and buy more) and all of our ornaments are either from when we were kids, from family, former players, friends, or students (sentimental). Then I realized that once Luke comes we’ll be putting up ornaments he has made and other sentimental ones and I probably won’t get that “beautiful” Christmas tree for another 20 years! Oh well, I guess that’s not the spirit of Christmas!!

Now, after way too much rambling, I would like to share a couple of our legendary ornaments.

Santa Claus aka ho ho- Pulling this little guy out of our decoration box was one of my favorite parts of decorating our tree when I was little. My mom made him when she was young and he has survived every Christmas ever since. He used to reside on the top of the tree in the Allocco household, but as a Hansen we got our Christmas angel from Mike's grandma so he had to be downgraded a bit. He is still as close to the top as I can get him. Please check out his arms and his legs. I love him.





Basketball ornaments- After decorating the tree this year, we decided that close to 80% of our ornaments have something to do with basketball. And I am not exaggerating. It's either Santa basketball player, or a hanging basketball or a reindeer holding a basketball...you get the picture. I decided to take a picture of the little boy with a basketball because he's so cute!


Soldiers- Always a favorite of my brother and I when we were young. We have soldiers in many colors. This one is injured, he is an amputee so I thought he deserved to be photographed and put on our blog for all his hard work through out the years.


Teacher/Coach ornaments- The other 20% of our ornaments pretty much can go in the gifts from students or players category. Here are a couple examples of those:

Well there you have it, our 2008 Christmas tree!