To Tree or Not to Tree

I've obviously been thinking a lot these past few days about letting go of stress and choosing joy, even amidst certain circumstances that I can't change. I came to a pretty big (for me) decision today that I still have mixed feelings about, but I know it's the right decision. A few weeks ago, I sent Steven a Five Below ad and asked him to swing by and pick up their $5 4 foot artificial Christmas tree. I knew for $5 it would probably be a Charlie Brown tree, but I figured that would be perfect for a tree that the girls could decorate and undecorate to their hearts' content. I got a few wooden ornaments from Michael's that they can paint, and we have plenty of kid friendly ones in our stash. At that time, it was going to hopefully be a way to keep Clare from undecorating our real tree, like she did last year. But today I had a light bulb moment. Eliminate stress, choose joy. Let the girls have their tree as OUR tree. Charlie Brown and all, who cares? They certainly won't. They'll be thrilled to be totally in charge of the tree. And it will save us the money of buying a real tree (which I LOVE, but it does get pricey year after year), and the time of getting it, getting it set up, watering it, vacuuming the needles every few days, feeling stressed when ornaments are being taken off, and eventually having to take it all down to the curb, and scrub out the tree stand from all the sap. A year off? I'll take it. I don't feel pressure at all from my family; I know the kids will love the little tree, and Steven is very pro reducing stress for me. But I still feel that outside pressure, imaginary maybe, of anyone coming in our home seeing that we don't have a 'real' (live or more legit artificial tree). There's always that neighbor or friend with the show worthy house that you can't help but think "man, they're going to think this is so lame". But.... like was on my list, I need to let go of expectations- both expectations I have of myself, and ones that others may have of me (or that I assume they have of me). So I am letting it go. This year we will embrace and enjoy our Charlie Brown tree! And next year we'll have a crawler, so this may be a tradition for a while ;). As Felicity popped up this morning at 6:15 and said "Happy Thanksgiving Eve, mama!!!!", it helped me realize that she cares about the same stuff I do... the people, the joy of the season, the excitement. She doesn't need anything fancy to enjoy the fun of the day, so neither do I!