some of my favorite ornaments...

so i love snowmen... and i just think that this ornament is so cute. i'm sure i'm not alone in this tradition, but i get gerry an ornament every year.. .i bought this one for him a few years ago.
i have some really cute pink ornaments from my mother in law...and of course some elephants... i actually have 6 or 7 elephant ornaments. this one is my favorite though. i got it from joycie and willard (who are/were like another set of grandparents to me) a few years back.
this is among the many kid-made ornaments with their picture on it...
and of course we have a john deere tractor ornament (actually we have another one too)!

then we have some proof that i am a child of the 80's with my care bear ornament...

and cabbage patch kid...

and strawberry shortcake- although this one does not smell :(
then we have jolly old saint nicholas... on a snowmobile

and who DOESN'T have a camouflage wearing, shotgun toting santa claus?and then the ornament that proved to me that we really ARE rednecks... the santa claus made out of a shotgun shell. yes, i'm serious.

so after a long day yesterday... clay and i decorated the tree... he is such a ham!

oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree...

so here we go... it's christmas tree time. here is our usual scenario...

1. gerry cuts down a tree
2. the tree is so big that he needs to cut it down a few times until it fits in the living room
3. he gets aggravated trying to get it to stand up straight
4. he puts the lights on
5. clay and i start hanging the ornaments on the tree
6. clay gets bored after 13 minutes and i finish alone.

well, things are a bit different this year... gerry cut down our tree like normal, only this time it was a bit smaller than usual. it still has a bunch of pine cones hanging on it! (and ps, they kind of look like turds... yeah, that's right. i said turds.) it's rather skinny... i'm pretty sure we will NOT be hanging all our ornaments this year- they won't fit!

for the first time since i have known gerry, he puts the lights on the tree... BEFORE he plugged them in to make sure they all worked. and what happened you may ask? the top didn't work, and neither did the random strand in the middle. oh boy was he angry! of course i started (inappropriately) laughing and snapping pictures... i think clay may have been more angry than gerry that i was taking pictures. he kept yelling "mom, you CAN NOT take pictures of the tree when all the lights are not working. mom, do NOT take that picture!" i'm not sure why he was so mad about it, but he was... which made me laugh even harder.

so gerry gave up... i decided that i would give the lights a whirl. now, i will admit that i can be a bit stubborn at times... and i talk a lot of crap sometimes. so i took down his lights and began stringing my own white lights. i talked crap about how easy it was to do lights... and yeah, i ended up with 2 or so feet of tree left and no more lights. so i had to redo it... i continued to talk crap as i redid the lights... and i think i was quite successful :)
by the way, i got this super cute tree skirt last year from old navy and i love it. it's square, and has cute sequined flower-ish designs on it. i love it.

and then here is clay... he disappeared into the basement after i kept laughing at gerry's light job. when i finished my (second) lighting of the tree, i called down for him to come see my great job... and i called for him... and i called for him. i assumed he was "not hearing" me because it was bed time. i was wrong... he was passed out. oh well, hopefully he will be a little more help tomorrow night while we decorate... stay tuned for pictures of my favorite ornaments! :)