Trimming the Gateless Tree

Today we decorated the tree.  The kids are old enough this year to kinda sorta help.  We gave them non-critical non-breakable ornaments and tried to explain how the ornament hooks worked.  Joshua got it.  Clara didn't quite get it.  And Hannah didn't care to do it.  We did it after lunch today, so it was naptime for Clara and Hannah pretty quickly, and Meghan and I did the vast majority of the ornaments with Joshua doing a token amount, most of which we had to adjust later.  But it was nice to start to get him involved in the process.  Up until today, he had been calling ornaments "jingle bells" due to some confusion at some point, but I think he has it straight now.

A great development this year is we are not putting the baby gate around the tree for the first time in several years.  We have made the rules very clear to them that they are never to touch any ornaments.  Just to be safe, though, we have our more cherished ones out of their reach.  But the tree looks MUCH better without that ugly gate around it, so I'm glad we're finally at that point.