It seems like everywhere I turn I'm seeing fancy tree ideas - colored trees, theme trees, upside down trees.   The tree at our house is pretty old fashioned.  It's really tall and has some big gaps in it.  It's decorated with ornaments from when I was little, pine cone garland I made the first year Marty and I had a tree together, ornaments made out of my old shrimpy collection.  Up until this year, we only had white lights, a leftover from a vision I had as a girl that all white lights on a tree was somehow glamorous.  Our tree changed a bit this year because Martin's idea of glamor includes colored lights that blink.

Capturing the loveliness of a Christmas tree is as tough for me as it is to capture a beautiful landscape - my photos just never do it justice.  This is as close as I could get - Sophie standing in front, cheering at it's splendour.


She loved the tree so much that she took all the cushions off the furniture and placed them in a circle in front of the tree, creating a jumping platform for her celebratory dance.


I thought it was really funny until she almost fell into the tree and I had visions of a repeat of last year's tree crash.  So, we put the cushions back and declared tree dancing best far away from the actual tree.