Season of giving and creating

It’s that time of year again. The time when we all rush out and climb over eachother for that toy that we have to have.

This is a time for happiness. And oddly enough sometimes for lonliness. For Giving and receiving. The beauty of family and the hope of togetherness.
For me it is a time to be with the two most important people in my life. My boys. There is nothing on this earth that makes me more happy than seeing their happiness.

There are times when I think I haven’t been the best father. But this is defeatist thinking. I do my best, just the same as every parent does. We want our children to be happy, and strive to be better than us.

The other day I bought a little plastic Christmas tree. The thing was only three feet tall, and reminded me of the Charlie brown Christmas tree, before decoration.

I had the boys help me with the lights. I stood back and watched the bare tree twinkle. It was missing something. Ornaments of course! Now it would have been easy to walk down to the drug store and pick up some cheap baubles. But being me I sat down and thought. The whole time wrestling with the little ones.

It occured to me some time later that there might be a better way to make this Christmas decorating a little more fun, and memorable.

On Saturdays we often go to the farmers market together. I load up the doublewide stroller and lean back as I glide down the giant hill. This time however I made a stop at the art store. We loaded up on construction paper, glue, glitter and other implements of destructive constructionism.

When we got home we sat down and crafted our own ornaments. I asked the boys what shapes they wanted, then we cut them out.  We decorated them with glue and glitter. Then attached string and violla! Ornaments.

They were jagged and runny, lopsided and bent, with all sorts of different glue glitter designs only a four year old could create. But to me they were by far the most valuable ornaments I had ever had. The expieriance itself was well worth the time and effort.

The result, much like Charlie Brown’s post decoration tree, was by far the best looking Christmas tree I had ever seen. And probably always will be.

W.