A Motley Crew

Martha Stewart would laugh us out of her catalog.



Our ornaments are an acquired assortment of ragtag balls and memory-laden pieces with the wild mess of homemade ones added in.

None of them are worth anything except to us.

Our tree is no longer the hand cut tree we acquired each year tramping around on the Christmas tree farms. We loved hunting for our perfect tree although none of them would have ever made it into a catalog.

One year our hand cut tree died half-way through the Christmas season. By Christmas day it was a bare naked tree with a million needles littering the floor.

Our tree is now a store-bought one due to having to exile the last hand cut tree to the garage for the duration of the Christmas season after Ben had a serious allergic reaction to it. That year our presents were pretty forlorn without the tree standing over them.

Our kids hang the ornaments.



Wherever they want.

They have no sense of design.

They don't think about balance.

They just enjoy putting our ragtag assortment on the branches.

They hang based on their height or reach.

Which makes our tree lopsided and heavy-laden in certain sections. Usually down-low.

I've never rearranged.

Not since our first born hung his first ornament on the branches.

It's their tree.

It's their fun.

I don't need a perfectly balanced tree with gorgeous ornaments.

I don't need to 'fix' what they have done.

I may rehang one that has come tumbling to the floor.

I may rescue one that is hanging precariously on a branch.

But I'm fine with our mess of a tree.

I don't need picture-perfect.

Our lives are not picture-perfect.

We are a motley crew.

We rarely dress up pretty. We don't go out to fancy places. We are a crew of ragtag kids, homegrown and brought from overseas.

We live chaos and crazy most of the time.

From the outside looking in we look a bit of a mess, unbalanced, uneven and definitely ragtag.

But we love.

And we are fine with how we look.

Who cares if we don't make the Martha Stewart catalog.

Who cares if we are not picture perfect.

Who cares if the lights on our tree this year have completely died!

We love our motley tree and we love our motley crew.

And that's all that matters!