Oh, Christmas Tree

Kevin spent the night again last night and put up our Christmas tree. Our tree is older and is not quickly put together. First you have to figure out how the stand goes together. Directions came with the tree and are around somewhere, but I have always been a firm believer in doing first and reading directions later, if at all. Each layer of branches has a coordinating colored end such as blue, red, etc...But most of the paint has worn off so at best it is a guess which branch goes to which level. Each branch has smaller branches that have to be formed into a realistic looking pine bough. It usually takes me several hours to sort each pile of branches and then go through each pile and form each bough. Kevin, I found, has a different way of putting the tree together. He just kind of eyeballed each branch and put it in a pile of others approximately the same size, put all the branches on the tree trunk and then kind of spread them out. It was much, much faster than the way I have always put the tree up. There was a time when I might have told Kevin the right way to do the tree and insist he do it my way. It was very difficult to learn to accept help when it is offered and to lose control over the way things are done. I was grateful that Kevin did the hard work and I get to do the fun part, decorating the tree. I realize that there are other ways to do things rather than just my way and if the end result isn’t perfect, well, I have never seen a perfect tree.