Merry Christmas, Max!

This will be Max's first Christmas with us. This has been on my mind lately for several reasons. Not so much, "What to get a dog..." but "how do we keep Christmas decorations safe from the dog!"

I put up our Christmas tree on Wednesday. Left it naked just to see what Max would do. Well, he thinks it's a giant chew toy, lots of fake needles were quickly on the floor, more than normal in the course of setting it up. Hmmm.... last night I put pieces of foil on the floor around the tree. That seemed to scare him off a little.

I was home all morning while we got our DISH service upgraded. (Sorry boys, your remotes and boxes for your bedrooms are gone...) So decided it was time to decorate. First decision - no fragile ornaments. That means that the vintage, breakable ornaments that I've decorated the tree with for the last several years are staying boxed up this year. I'll miss them. Decided to dig out all of the angel ornaments that I haven't used for a while. I first used them on my classroom tree when I taught third grade at Liberty. I've also used them for my office tree when I was director at Aldersgate. But it's been a while. It was nice to see some old favorites as I decorated the tree. My main vocabulary consisted of "No, Max" though as he thought the garland was a pull toy and the ornaments were something fun to nose around. Didn't put many down low for that very reason!

Well, got to thinking. We need a gate or something around the tree. Suddenly, I remembered: We had a 16" high enclosure for our guinea pig a few years back. Think it's still downstairs. Yep, there it is. And low and behold, it works great. Goes from the window around to the other side and seems to be tall enough to block Mr. Max from becoming too curious! Sometimes it does pay to hold onto stuff, I guess.

We'll see how the rest of everything goes. No stockings up until the last minute, I can see that already. Not sure which nativity will work better. And forget about displays on the coffee table.

Christmas will be Christmas, with or without some of the traditional decorations.

And yes, we did buy Max a Santa hat already. He might be marching in a parade tomorrow with it on!