Heaven and Nature Sing

Everyone in Neverland got their Thanksgiving feast after all this morning, although the food was what you'd expect the Lost Boys to be eating:  imaginary.  And at the end, things went in a direction you'd expect for the Lost Boys:  an imaginary food fight.  Captain Hook was foiled again, and all was well, at least for the time being.  Next week, we move from a Thanksgiving story to a Christmas one.  Maddie and her friends on stage there have been having fun each week, and there's no sense in stopping that now, right?

 

So this afternoon we were off to the Botanical Gardens again, this time to decorate a tree that they set up for us.  Each year, they have a "Holiday Tree Trail," where certain people are invited to decorate their own Christmas tree with ornaments that celebrate nature, gardening, or the outdoors in general.  Mom has been making ornaments for quite some time, with a little help from Nana, and so we packed up all the ornaments and headed down to the gardens to decorate our tree.

You can see the different ornaments we put on the tree, a theme of cardinals.  We thought the red and the white would stand out more on tree with so much brown and green all around in the environment there.  The pine cones are from our back yard - Mom and Nana harvested those, and then painted them afterwards with a white frosting.  The smaller heart-shaped ornaments are decorated by Mom, each one with hand-drawn cardinals, holly leaves, pine tree leaves, and small messages.  

The whole family was on hand to decorate.  You can see Maddie here, lending a hand at one point.  We had a little over an hour to get everything in place, as we went after church today.  But we didn't feel that rushed.  It's not a large tree, not like the ones we have at our house.

"Cardinals appear when angels are near."  Mom was really drawn to the idea of Cardinals, and of course as we were leaving afterwards, sure enough, a cardinal flew right up to us.

We had wanted to try this one, just as we wanted to try a scarecrow in October, and way back then we were thinking up a theme.  It didn't take Mom long to arrive at this idea.  In fact, she's already got an idea for next year that involves tiny birdhouses.

You can see the top here, with the black-and-white checkered ribbons, white branches and poinsettia.  We've put up a lot of trees this year, haven't we?  We've still got one more to go in Maddie's room, actually.  

The afternoon was perfect for this.  You can see another tree off to the right in this picture above, one already decorated.  We found a nice location, and saw a few visitors to the gardens as we were decorating. There were about four or five groups walking through over the hour or so we were there, but for the most part it was a very quiet, very pleasant afternoon.

While we were finishing up, Maddie had a seat on one of the benches there, texting of course, but also just relaxing.  It's a nice place there.

Ultimately, we finished up with about a half-hour to go until the gardens closed on Sunday afternoon.  There are other trees along the path, about two undecorated, but the decorating was scheduled to take place today and tomorrow, so those who reserved trees like us can come in tomorrow as well.  However, most of them were already decorated when we arrived, as it was first come, first serve on the which particular tree to choose.  Sunday is a busy day for us in the morning, so we were fine coming by in the afternoon, and in fact, we found a very nice tree is a pretty good location.

We debated a tree base, but we thought it was okay without any kind of tree skirt.  The rest on the bottom sort of enhances the rest of the tree, actually.

"Let your heart be light."  That's a message we can all use this year for certain.  Much was made of 2020 being a terrible year and so forth, but this one clearly has been tougher.

Maddie was all smiles this afternoon.  It's a busy day today for her, as right after this, we were off to the church for the final FCY of November.  We actually dropped her off on the way home - she had a great night as always, while we were at home watching a few Christmas movies, including "A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong," which was hysterical.

This is fourth tree decorated this season, and we've got one more in Maddie's room.  Time is tight on that, so it might have to wait until next weekend.  We've got a lot going on, but a lot of the things scheduled are going to be things like this, some nice chances to get out of the house and do a few things that we can do with Nana.

Mom's been working on these ornaments with Nana sometimes helping, and she's been doing this since October or so, squeezing in some creating in between working on costuming for the Christmas production and looking after Nana.  That in itself has become a full-time job.

But in the end, this has come out so well.  It's a gorgeous tree!  She did such a great job.  We helped hang things, and even helped here or there elsewhere, but most of this was certainly Mom's efforts rewarded.  What makes it even greater was that this was a chance for the whole family to spend time together doing something like this while out.

One more shot of the tree.  We'll take pictures of the other trees when we go back to visit, but we wanted to make sure we got pictures of our tree here before we left, and the weather is supposed to be clear the next week or so, which will be good news.

As mentioned earlier, Maddie had her youth service tonight, and we were at home watching a few things.  We picked up Maddie and got home, and yeah, we had to get to bed early tonight.  School returns tomorrow, and things are building momentum for this Christmas production we're working on.  We still read from our book though - it's a long one, by the way, over six hundred pages long.  But Maddie is hooked, and we're moving through it pretty quickly considering.  We said our prayers tonight, and after that, it was time for some sleep, except for Mom, who's been up so incredibly late recently, putting together costumes for Wise Men, Shepherds, Mary, and Joseph.