Now that Thanksgiving is over, more and more people have started decorating their houses for Christmas. We shared in an earlier post that my family decorates for Christmas on Halloween. So we have had decorations at my house for a month now.

This year, my kids were old enough to get into decorating even more, and this time, they were actually helpful.

My hubby took care of putting lights on the tree while we set up the other decorations around the room.

We were going to wait a little later to finish the tree after our Halloween fun with family. However, Ninja Boy found the ribbon and decided to take matters into his own hands.

He put up every kind of ribbon we had until he couldn’t reach anymore. Then we got him the ladder so he could finish.

The next day, we had the time to finish decorating the tree with the ornaments. I got each one out of the box and talked about the ones that held special meaning before letting the kids put them on the tree. They put every ornament on themselves with no help from mommy or daddy. They were so proud when it was all done.

I grew up with a hodge podge of ornaments on our family tree. I loved it as a kid, but when I got married, I wanted a pretty color-matched tree like in magazines and stores. A few years ago I realized that since having kids, I was liking the hodge podge tree even more than my matchy matchy tree.

After the kids decorated our tree all by themselves for the first time, I realized that it was my favorite tree ever. Every time I look at it, I get a warm feeling and am so proud. I could have had a “beautifully” decorated tree that I carefully placed each ornament and decoration on, but I don’t think that kind of tree would ever produce the same feeling as this one that’s full of memories of fun, childhood, and the people I love most.

So I say, let them decorate. Perfect is never as meaningful as the imperfect done with joy and love.