We three trees.

Thanksgiving weekend we retrieved most of our Christmas boxes from our storage unit, but because of our current Project GOOD status, we didn't want to dig out our big Christmas tree. It was WAAAAAY in the back of the unit, buried under a bunch of boxes. Instead, we decided, we would set up my mom's old (smaller) tree and a new little white tree I'd picked up at Walmart. They were much easier to get to, and two trees could take the place of one bigger tree, right?

Um, NO.

There we were in the sunroom, setting up the first smaller tree, and I was just not feeling it. Brett and the kids were being good sports and talking up the cool factor of having two trees, but I just couldn't deal. My mom's tree, while a perfectly nice one, is not OURS. Waa, waa, waa.

So my sweet husband dug out our big tree. We're already disappointed that we haven't moved; seeing the "wrong" tree every day would just pour salt into the wound.

Now THAT'S more like it.

That's how we ended up with three trees in the house, a house that's mostly empty because of the aforementioned Project GOOD. Because of that emptiness, the kids' rooms have plenty of space. Nature—and Christmas, apparently—abhors a vacuum, so into their rooms the trees went.

Katie's Polar Express tree

Ryan's multi-colored sci-fi/video game tree

With that drama out of the way, we could get down to decorating our "real" tree.

Katie serenades us with "Ave Maria"

Katie welcomes us to her winter wonderland
(with her favorite Barbie ornament from 2000)

So that's how we ended up with three Christmas trees this year. Well, since I'm a little late telling this story, that's no longer accurate.

Once you have three trees up, what's a fourth?