The Decorating Elves...

"Hey," my mother-in-law said as my wife and I prepared to drive away from her house a few weeks go. "Maybe your kids could come over and decorate while we're gone." It had been established earlier that our kids would put up my in-law's Christmas decorations. It's a family Christmas tradition that's only a couple of years old now.

"Yeah..." we said. "That would be a good time to do it." And so my in-laws left town for the weekend and we invaded their house. Since we decorated last year, I thought decoration this year would be a piece of "fruit" cake (so, so sorry for that...). It turns out, it wasn't as easy as I thought i would be. Last year, the in-laws were there to help out. This year, we were on our own.

We brought up the tree from the basement and retrieved all the boxes from under the stairs. As we opened up box after box, I came to realize that they have a lot of decorations and finding places for everything was going to be a challenge. For example, they have a very cool lighted red chili peppers set, and I thought I remembered it hanging in their kitchen. Well, I saw a place above the sink where I could hang the clump of lights. I had to remove the dish scrubbing brush but it looked good. I worried that my mother-in-law needed the brush to be in that specific spot--it was a silly thought I had, I know, but some people are particular about things...

Eventually we found places for most of the decorations. When we were done we returned the boxes to the basement, unplugged all the lights and left. We had to wait until the in-laws returned until we found out if our efforts were acceptable.

Not only were they acceptable, I have it on good authority that the results were very well received. In fact. they loved it (even the hanging lighted red chili peppers...). Mission accomplished.