the joy of trees

I'm getting old.... by the time I woke up this morning, I'd forgotten all about tree fun and went about planning a day of jobs. But the two littlest bullis were bouncing off the walls with tree decorating excitement to remind me of how much fun the whole Christmas thing is! Z and I did the boring stuff while A took E to dance class and then we all decorated the tree together this afternoon. Joy! Antony and I are handling our despair at the tree getting less "mainstream beautiful" with each passing year. I even let Z select a new decoration from the shop and didn't question his dubious taste (it's a multicolour bauble made up of various pom poms and it's honestly awful).

Eve and I also had an interesting half hour putting out the nativity set. The key characters have all been renamed after the people in her class who played each role in the school performance. So our wise men are now Barney, Roger(!) and Fin. Mary is now called Lydia, the angel is called Eve (of course) and the sheep is Stephen. There was a moment of distress when Eve couldn't remember the name of the boy who played the donkey but all is resolved... we're going to call him Donkey.