beautiful.
This vacation we have gotten to lots of little projects on our to-do list. One of those was tree trimming. This first kind is not the seasonal trim the Christmas tree kind of trimming, but the borrow a friends extension chain saw kind of trimming! Ian did the major work. Holding an extension chain saw up in the air for a good part of the morning is no easy task! But is was a fun new power toy! He cut down a lot of dead branches and then thinned out some branches from the big trees in the back yard.
It was a family affair for the entire morning. I got in with the clippers and trimmed little sucker branches off trees as well as a lot of over grown plants. Kay and Tom enjoyed helping by moving branches to the wood pile.
Why are kids so attracted to dead branches?
Heidi helped some too with plant trimming and moving brush. What an object lesson! We were able to talk and think about how branches dry up and die when they are not connected to the tree just like we dry up when not connected to our Savior and his life. It is satifying to have that project done! Hopefully the gardens in our compound will benefit! I know our family enjoyed the morning together talking and working to make our compound look nice.
The other, more traditional December type of tree trimming happened this year as well! Dad's job is assembling the tree and hanging the lights up, then he claims the "supervisory" role. Mom's job is to hand out the ornaments, making sure they all have hooks and supplementing the upper branches at the end with a few extra ornaments. The kids all love hanging their special ornaments up on the tree and hearing the stories of where different family ornaments have come from over the years. I always enjoy the wide variety of ornaments we have: wood, metal, glass, yarn, clay, walnuts-almost anything you can imagine. This year we even had an ornament made out of a toilet paper tube (Go Tom!)! The shapes are even more varied than the materials: a violin, multiple air planes, a mailbox, and a church, a train, several dolls, a lobster, and lots of snowflakes, just to name a few! This process always reminds me how love, time and memories make even the most humble purple, clay angel beautiful! Here are the kids proud of our tree!
As the kids get older I am enjoying the preperation for Christmas more each year. They love the traditions so much and I seem to find new wrinkles of meaning as I listen to them explain to each other why we do certain things.
