Perfection Pending

My book club's Christmas party was this past Thursday. For the past 5 years or so, we've chosen a Christmas book to read to discuss at the party, and we've read some pretty good ones. Not so this year (at least in my opinion, but that's what matters on my own blog, right?!) This year we read Debbie Macomber's The Perfect Christmas. Gag. Sickening. Waste of my time. (And I'm actually a fan of a good romance.) Good thing it was a quick read. In hindsight, the title should have clued me off:  a perfect Christmas? As Jane Austen said so well, "Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked."

I thought of this as we were decorating our tree this week. And I say "this week" because we bought it Tuesday, but were too busy to decorate it. We put the lights up Wednesday, but again, too busy for the ornaments. We finally managed to put up the ornaments and the tree looks fabulous (and smells even better!) But nothing went according to the "ideal tree decorating experience" in my mind--you know, the one where everyone harmoniously puts their decorations on the tree, bathed in the soft glow of the lights, with the Christmas music in the background, and then maybe we all drink hot chocolate and enjoy each other's company. Nope. Instead H fought with everyone. He wanted to hold all of the ornaments and if you didn't let him, he tried to forcibly pry it from your hands. He didn't want to wait for the hooks or the batteries. He didn't want to wait for me to unwrap ornaments from their wrappings. And Sweetie asked about 15 times why she didn't get to put the star on the top. So it's a good thing that I had that Jane Austen quote in mind so keep me amused at our absolutely-not-perfect tree-decorating this year. I tried to document some of it here (and notice that I actually made it in one of the pictures this time!):