Gift of patience

I read one time that you can get an idea as to how much patience a man has by the way he handles untangling Christmas tree lights. I recall how flustered my dad used to get when doing this "chore"! I remembered reading that passage when my husband and I were dating, and enjoying our first Christmas together. I paid special attention and also made a mental note during the process of him untangling and stringing the lights on the tree. He had it mastered perfectly. It's part of our tradition that he strings the lights on our tree and takes them off. Then we enjoy listening to Christmas music and adorning our tree together.

Regrettably, we took our beautiful tree down last night. I didn't want to. It was so beautiful and was still holding its needles so well. On our way home last evening from dinner, I lightheartedly made the comment that we should just leave the tree up for one more month. That way we could decorate it for Valentine's. The white lights would be perfect and we could don the tree with angels and hearts. He laughed. He knows how silly I am. I don't think he shared my enthusiasm!

Hearts for Valentine tree???

We got home, got comfortable, and started "de-decking" our tree. Our cat Holly was certainly enjoying all the commotion and excitement. I removed all the cherished ornaments off our tree and laid them out on our coffee table. He then removed each individual string of lights and neatly rolled it up, and it was placed into its own separate small plastic bag. I asked him if he was always so careful with the lights. He chuckled and replied that he used to put all the Christmas lights in one bag, and then he got smart. I laughed and asked him if "he married me and got smart". But then right after making that comment, I thought about it for a moment and realized how it sounded, so I quickly retracted it by saying "you got smart and married me!"

Even though I wasn't quite ready to take our tree down, once I had the ornaments off the tree, I didn't feel so bad. I was ready to get the house spiffed up.

I think I'm going to do something different this year. I'm going to leave my snowman collection out for the rest of the month to enjoy.