It's not all smiles and carols.....

On Sunday, in the 30 degree heat I text my husband whilst at the shops and said "Start putting the Christmas tree up, the kids and I will decorate when we get home"!

How simple was that?

All I wanted was to complete one of our family traditions, decorating the tree with carols, laughter, cheer and fun!  Simple right?!? Wrong.

I arrived home to find my not so impressed husband putting up the tree, sweating like a pig and looking like if the kids and my parents weren't around that tree would be thrown right at my head.

"Oh great you got my text" I cheerfully said!

The kids started jumping up and down, extremely excited to be decorating the tree.

So whilst hubby completed the assembly with two highly passionate kids saying 378 times "Can we decorate yet?" I went on the hunt for the decorations.

The first box I found was the one with the really cute teddies that sing a Christmas song when you press their hand, my two year old found these toys rather impressive.  Hot and flustered hubby, not so much!

I went into the garage and finally found the box of decorations...... BURIED RIGHT AT THE BOTTOM!  I came out and asked hubby to help me retrieve them.  We exchanged a few choice words in the garage out of the kids earshot and then finally we had them out.

The kids started decorating (still singing along to the merry teddy bear), my Mum laid on the couch icing her face from a headache, my Dad was out the back watering my gardens trying to figure out how much Seasol per litre of water (in 30 degree heat) and hubby just refused to be apart of it at this point and went for a shower!

Christmas isn't always like in the movies, perfectly dressed children happily decorating Christmas trees and singing along to carols (in tune of course).  It was hot, it was crazy and it was extremely messy!

At the end, the tree was decorated, the house was full of dust thanks to the decorations being stored in the garage but more importantly the kids both had a HUGE smile on their face.  

Hubby and I had time to take a breath (and remove the singing teddy from the 2-year old) and we sat back, ate vegemite sambos with the kids and admired our artistically decorated tree (Mum and Dad had already bailed out by this point).

Enjoy YOUR kind of Christmas.  Don't try and make it someone else, make it your own!