Taking Down the Tree

Although our tree usually stays long past its welcome, I am always sad when we take it down. It seems that it takes days to decorate the house for the holidays but less than an hour for the tree, the lights, the cards and garland to disappear. Last year, Elizabeth was as sad as me when the tree finally came down - but this year, she was unusually jovial, "testing" the lights as we took them off of the tree and helping me by pulling all of "her" ornaments off of the tree. Then Lee started chopping up the tree...

The girls had a great time helping us take down the ornaments, ribbon and lights.

This is the most I've seen him smile in weeks.

It finally dawned upon Elizabeth that we weren't just taking down the decorations...

Per the usual, this tree was so stinkin' big that Lee had to chop it up to get it out of the house. He claims that's not normal, but that's what my dad used to do....