The salesman was so excited, he didn’t even know what to do.

My mom just smiled at him and said, “How ’bout I take the tag, buy the tree, and drive around to pick it up?”
“Great Idea!” He agreed, and that’s how we bought Walmart’s first Christmas tree of the year.
Up on the car the tree went and everyone cheered as we drove it home. Up it went again, this time in our home, and up went the lights. But that was all the decoration we had for our tree. We lost most of our ornaments this year to mold while the boxes were in storage. Staring at the bare tree I wondered what we would do. As if Alisa had read my mind, she suggested, “What if we made ornaments this year?” A perfect plan!

In a less than an hour, the TV was playing Christmas movie classics while Mom, my little brothers and I strung popcorn and cranberries into long, colorful chains. Alisa and Meghan were in the kitchen making gingerbread dough and Kendra was making pies (but the pies weren’t for the tree). Around midnight I told Meghan, “I don’t want to sleep!” “Me neither,” she laughed. I looked at her and grinned, “Do you want to pull an all-nighter?” “Let’s do it!” Alisa joined us as we cleaned and then made cranberry sauce and gingerbread ornaments all from scratch. We finally crashed at about 5 in the morning and finished the ornaments the next day. My littlest brother, Ammon, made a long string of 20 gingerbread men and lay them across the branches as his contribution. Our tree looked beautiful!

A couple days ago, I sat admiring our beautiful tree and how perfect it looked when I realized something wasn’t quite perfect. “What was it?” I thought… I studied the branches; they were all in tact. The lights were all working and the cranberry-popcorn chains were nestled intricately among the branches. Then I saw it – Our gingerbread cookies were missing! I looked around frantically, searching for the culprit. My eyes stopped on Cocoa. That dog! These past couple of days, he’s felt sick and had a severe ear ache… Now I know why. He must’ve eaten 30 cookies!
The cookies are a little higher now and the tree not quite as perfect, but it’s our tree nonetheless… and it’s Christmas.