The "Decorator" Story

It was an ordinary day.  I'm sitting in my lounge chair reading the morning paper while Carol is decorating the Christmas tree.  Yesterday our daughter and her family arrived from Maryland for Thanksgiving dinner.  While they were visiting for a few days Carol had them help get our Christmas tree down from the storage above our garage.  Our 9 foot artificial Christmas tree is too large and heavy to store any other place in our home so I rigged up a rope and pulley system to haul the tree up to the storage.  Tie the clothes lines to either side of the tree box, run the lines through the pulleys on the rafters of the garage and tie the other end to the tow hook on my Mazda Protege.  Simple as that.  At least I always thought so until I was incapacitated this year with back surgery and our daughter and son-in-law had to do the job.  Well, with a lot of "I can't believe this" and "There has to be an easier way" of moaning and groaning, the tree was standing in our living room.  And today, as I read the paper, Carol is busy putting the ornaments and strands of faux pearls on the tree.  Carol is the family decorator.  She loves holidays with Christmas being her favorite.  We have plastic storage bins stored in our bedroom cedar closet and I usually help with the chore of bringing all those to the first floor, but again, I couldn't do it this year.  Carol did it all.  She makes the holiday festive for everyone who steps into our home.  And, that includes me.  I must admit that our place would seem a bit drab if the decorating was left to me.  She is a real sweetheart to do all this by herself.  After the tree in the living room she began the tree in the family room.  Next came the ... well, why don't you just look at all the decorating that Carol has done this year …  (click on photo to enlarge)

The Woods' Family Christmas Tree 2014.  You can't imagine how many ornaments are on this 9 foot tree.

Creamsicle enjoys the solitude of the tree.

The "Little Tree" which stands next to our rear door in the family room.

Some of Carol's Santa collection.

Some of Carol's nutcracker collection which lines the wall leading to our basement.

One of Carol's friends Marg made her a dough manger scene years ago. 

Carol's reindeer collection fills our coffee table in the living room next to the tree.

More of the Santa collection.

The stairs leading to our second floor are decorated with lights and handmade stockings for all our kids and grandkids.

A lighted beach tree fills the dining room table.

The front door has a lighted sled to help Santa find his way.

Our large lighted faux palm trees on our deck have added lights which Carol placed on them to help Santa find our house on Christmas Eve.

Our household sports a festive greeting to all who enter during the Christmas holiday due to the hard work that my wife has done the past few weeks.  She is now busy baking about a dozen different types of Christmas cookies to share with those who visit with us this Christmas season.  Thank goodness for the decorator or my life would be less bright this holiday season.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.