Sounds of the Season....

This morning on the ride in to work, one of the local radio stations announced "This is a SOUND OF THE SEASON!!!" meaning that a carol of some sort was coming up. Now, I normally like carols of all sorts, the instrumentals, the vocals, rocking TSO and ethereal Celtic Woman. The DH on the other hand gets highly irritated when people take a well known carol, say Silent Night, and "jazzify" it up in some way. You know of what I speak: the crazy arrangements and sometimes even crazier singing.

So, I thought back about some of the sounds of the season that may have been heard in my house since we put up the tree on Saturday. Here goes

-Children fighting trying to get the Christmas stuff out of the attic followed closely by the sound of the DH telling them "If you work as a team it wouldn't be so hard."

-The thunk of the Christmas tree box hitting the floor where I dropped the bottom (oops).

-The rustle of the limbs of said Christmas tree (we have a 7.5 foot prelit-white lights-it's a big tree) as the children and I set up the tree in it's itty bitty stand. The organizationers of the D-Day Invasion have nothing on me trying to get Jared to lift his side and Kiersten to move forward.

-Again the rustle of limbs as they whack me in the face when I pull them down and "fluff" and the ensuing murmuring (with some bad words thrown in) from me. I get a picture of the tree in the Charlie Brown cartoons that always eats the kite except the tree is eating me.

-Another bunch of murmuring from me while I try to find all the plugs for the stupid tree. Finally, I go to Mike who is cooking dinner and say "I can't find the other plug in for that side of the tree, it looks crazy with lights only on one side and why don't they put a longer cord in the stupid thing?! Could you please deal with it after dinner?" He looks upon me with that sweet, patient look and probably sees a crazed lunatic with her hair standing on end and scratches from the limbs mentioned before and takes pity on me. I get the sweet patient look a lot during the holidays.

-As we listen to TSO, the kiddies decorate the tree with their own ornaments. Of course, this year the bottom foot of our tree is undecorated to keep temptation from Sally the wonder dog. There isn't any fussing amongst the family, just looking at the pictures in some of the ornaments and reminiscing about how chubby Jared was as a baby or how much Kiersten has changed.

What other things do I listen for at Christmas? Bells, Christmas movies (although I don't watch them and I hate It's a Wonderful Life. Yes, I know, it's sacrilege to hate that movie but I just don't like it). Mike absolutely howling with laughter watching Christmas Vacation and then proceeding to quote the entire movie right along with the actors. Like he says, everything can relate to Christmas Vacation. Mike telling me at 3 a.m. Christmas morning "let's get the kids up, come on, PLEASE!!!!" The patter of feet not so little anymore on Christmas morning. The sound of hours of wrapping in just the perfect paper being ripped to shreds by eager children. Big and little boys alike putting together toys and the big boys "trying it out" before the little guys can play with it. The sounds of family gathered at mom's on Christmas Day and the madness that ensues. We will be missing some this year and it will seem empty without the younger Ervins there.

What are your favorite sounds of the season?

Peace and love y'all!