By Clif Knight

Decorating our home for Christmas continues to be a busy and hectic time of the year for Geanell and me even though all three of our children are living away pursuing their own careers and raising families of their own. Their three daughters, our granddaughters, are adults following in their family’s footsteps. The family’s youngest and most daring and fun-loving member is Layla Fullerton, a third grader at Crestline Elementary School.

Fortunately, we’re all North Alabamians who are able to spend quality time together during the holidays, on family vacations and other special occasions.

At our ages, keeping track with where we store things for safekeeping is not something we do very well. The storage of Christmas decorations seems to be a troublemaker every year. After a week of searching, we were still missing our permanently lit artificial Christmas tree, for the second year in a row.

After taking down the tree and packing it back in its original shipping carton a few days after Christmas, I remembered storing it in either the upstairs attic, a rental storage unit or the closet underneath the second-floor stairway. I looked in the storage unit first and was unable to spot it because of all the clutter. Then, after a few days of rethinking, I tried looking in the attic. It wasn’t there either. I backed off checking out the stairway closet because I already know how difficult it is to find anything in that packed space. Another trip to the storage unit looks like my next best bet. This time I asked Geanell to give me a hand just in case other stored items have to be moved out of the way to get a better look.

The fact that we have Christmas décor stored in three different locations, including outdoor wreaths and lights that we no longer use, had me thinking I might be better off to vacate an unused upstairs bedroom and use it for nothing but holiday decorations.

The mystery of the lost tree was solved when Jeff Gray, our son-in-law, mentioned having an unclaimed tree in the back seat of his car.

“I picked it up by mistake not knowing it wasn’t one of ours,” he said.

The tree is now decorated and standing in its usual location.