Undecking the Halls

We love Christmas around here. We put up the tree each year the weekend after Thanksgiving and enjoy looking at the lights everyone around us puts up.

Our tree goes up in our living room in front of our big window that looks out into the front yard. While we love it there because it can be seen from the road and it’s beautiful to see when we pull into our driveway, we’re always a little (a lot?) relieved when Christmas is over and we take the tree down to reveal our lovely window all over again.

I haven’t felt well these past few days and because of the holidays, there hasn’t been a lot of time to just rest away the ickies. So on Sunday, Tom took the girls at 7:30 and sent me back to be for a couple of hours.

While I slumbered (read: coughed for two hours while lying down) Tom was busy in the living room taking down the Christmas tree.

This, for obvious reasons, makes him my hero.

I am usually the one tasked with putting up and taking down the tree. This year, I dutifully (and joyfully, mostly) put up the tree. But it took us over a week to actually get enough ornaments on it to call it good. We only opened three of our five boxes of Christmas decorations this year.

Tom insists that next year we’re going to open all five boxes, if only to go through them and purge the items we don’t want. Oh, he’s an ambitious soul, isn’t he?

So when I came down to fine the tree not only undecorated but also disassembled and put away, with the furniture moved back to the usual places and the carpet vacuumed, I could have kissed that man. Except that might have given him my nasty cough and I don’t want to do that. So instead I wheezed, “Thank you for doing that.”

He mumbled something that sounded like, “You’re welcome.”

Then he glanced over at where I’d slumped onto the couch and he asked, “How long would you have slept if you hadn’t set your alarm for 9:30?”

I replied, “Well, since I never actually slept much thanks to my coughing, I don’t know.”

He told me I looked tired.

I thanked him with more sincerity than you might think.

But honestly, having the window open and the tree down was the best gift he gave me this year.

That man…sometimes he still manages to surprise me, even after all these years.