Ornament collection

Growing up, my family usually waited to put the tree up until December. But this year I'll be heading home the week before Christmas and really wanted to get some mileage out of my decorations, so now I'm the person that buys a tree the day after Thanksgiving. So far, we're enjoying the decorating process in between breaks for leftovers.

When I was little, my mom always unpacked and laid out the ornaments on the coffee table and my brother and I would be in charge of decorating with my dad. One would assume that at a young age, the kids would stick to the bottom of the tree, which we did, but in my case, I always became rather fixated on one specific branch. We have a home video that zooms in on my branch of choice, each sprig tenderly adorned with an angel or bird or bobble. When I did not take to may parents' gentle urging of "branching out", so to speak, they discreetly moved in while I wasn't looking to diffuse the population a bit.