It's starting to look like Christmas in our house. Sunday morning my older sisters, Imogen and Charlotte, vanished into the garage to search for our Christmas tree.


They appeared a few minutes later with a massive cardboard box containing our tree.

"I feel like we're carrying a coffin," Charlotte joked.

I snorted. They looked much too merry to be coffin bearers.


Imogen and Charlotte lowered the box to the ground. Gemma-Rose, my younger sister, and I pulled branches from the box. We sorted them into piles for Imogen and Charlotte to connect to the trunk of our tree. We all knew what we were doing. We've put our tree up this way for years.

Sammy, one of our cats, noticed the piles of branches and lay down on them. He was most upset when we needed to use the branches he was resting on.


It didn't take long for us to assemble the tree. Imogen and Charlotte moved onto the next task: wrapping the tree in lights and tinsel.


Imogen has been putting the lights on our Christmas tree for years. It's the hardest part of decorating the tree, but she knows all the tricks and didn't have much trouble.

My camera was snapping away as everyone was working.



"Are we going to find embarrassing photos of us short people trying to decorate a tree on the internet?" Charlotte asked me from the seat she was standing on. (She can't reach the top of the tree without it.)

I just smiled. They don't care what photos of them are on the internet.


"How does the tree look?" Imogen asked Mum. She flicked the power switch and the tree lights came on.

"It's beautiful," Mum said. "Well done!"


Now all we've got to do is hang our decorations on the tree. But we won't do that today. We'll save that for another day.

Have you decorated your tree yet? What is your favourite part of preparing for Christmas? Are you ready for Christmas?