I never learn. Every year I look forward to decorating the Christmas tree as a Norman Rockwell-esque moment filled with holiday magic, heartwarming memories and family togetherness. I picture the four of us hanging ornaments and smiling tenderly at each other while a light snow falls outside. We might even break into song.

Except it never works out like that. Dad curses and swears because the !@# tree has no assembly instructions and the incompetent fools who manufactured it didn’t bother to explain how the built-in light strings are supposed to go together. Brayden gets impatient with the delay and keeps himself busy pretending the tree box is a coffin, causing Dad to curse even more. Justin watches all of this from the couch while he plays with bubble wrap and insists the one branch he fluffed out was all he should be required to do.

And when the boys finally do get around to decorating (in between all the jokes about hanging their balls on the tree), I have to bite my tongue to keep from pointing out that they’ve clustered all the red ornaments in one place and all the gold ones in another and it’s a crime against tree design and my head is going to explode.

Ho ho ho.

I swear it was easier when they were younger. You’d certainly think so based on the photos I took: smiling brothers with their arms around each other in front of a beautifully designed tree. But maybe I’m a victim of my own Fakebooking. Somehow I never recall the fights over who got to hang more gold balls or whose homemade snowman got the place of honor. I just remember the end result: a family that was excited for Christmas.

Which of course is the whole point.