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I remember when we used to make a whole day out of putting up the Christmas tree.

First, choose the best real, live tree.

Strap it on top and head home.

Turn on the Christmas music, untangle the lights, haul out the ornaments and get to work.

It was an all-day affair, but felt great at the end.

Now, enter the little children.

Although I still insist on a real tree, the process must now take several days, thanks to short attention spans and a tired mom and dad!

One day is just choosing the tree and getting it in the tree stand.

The next day is the lights and the tree-topper.

The next day is the ornaments....the non-breakable ones.

Finally, we adults carefully place the breakable ornaments near the top.

After a week, the tree is up. Fantastic, but certainly much more of an undertaking than it used to be!

I mentioned this to a friend, and she called it "the phases of the tree," which mirror the phases of the children. How true. I wonder how long it will be until we're back to the "tree-in-one-day-phase?!"