lights, Lights, LIGhts and more LIGHTS!!!!

Last year our pre lit tree died.  Dustin worked and worked to get the lights to work but after hours and days of trying we put strands of lights on the tree and moved on to decorating.  This year we decided to buy a plain jane no pre lit tree because in the past 9 years I can not tell you how many pre lit trees we have bought.  They just don't last and they are hard to replace.  And I am a picky Christmas tree person.  I Love Big, Fat, Full Trees!!!  Don't give me a skinny tree!  :) hahaha!!!  The saying "Go Big or Go Home" always plays in my mind when I look for trees.  I was shopping for a new tree and found not one but two!  And so I bought both.  One was on clearance for $15.  And that tree was the 1st one I put together and let the girls decorate.  And lets just say it doesn't meet the "Go Big or Go Home"! Its 6ft tall alright but about 2 feet is the metal rod and 4 feet is the tree.  :)  But my girls love it and it has found a home in their living room or as Abigail calls it "the gold room"!  Haahaa!  The other one is a beautiful (for an artificial), fluffy, fat, tree!  Once I got the trees in I wanted to get busy decorating but we have no lights.  So off to Wal Mart we go.  And I have forgotten all the choices of lights to choose from.  I think more now than 9 years ago.  LED lights, rope lights, colored lights, white lights, old time big bulb lights, etc.   There is a lot of choices for lights!  I am a white lights on the tree gal.  Its beautiful and bright!  Love it!!  My girls and hubby like colored.  I like the colored but when you sit in your living room with the lights off and the tree on nothing is prettier than the glowing white lights!  I love white lights, like colored and HATE runner/chaser lights!  They make me nervous!  Now once you figure out the kind of lights you get to choose the amount of lights!  20, 50, 100, 150, 300 Oh My!!!  Now remember we have had pre lit trees for the past 9 years.  So how many lights do need!!!  I go out to the lawn and garden center and look at the pre lit tree boxes to see how many lights are on the trees I have.  The 6ft tree had a little of 400 and the big one had 600.  All I kept thinking was no no no that just simply want do!!  So our little 6ft but really 4 ft tree has 600 colored lights and our 7 1/2 for tree has 900 white lights (so far)!  :)  I am thinking of adding more!  Remember Go Big and Bright!!  And during the process of adding lights to the tree I now remember why I Like pre-lit trees!  No ornaments are on our big tree now because we love to put them on as a family.  And our family will not be all together until next week!  I cant wait to get our ornaments out and remember when we got this ornament or that ornament.  Sweet memories!  Abigail will ask is this my ornament? How old was I?  I put names and year on their ornament of the year.  They each get one ornament from Hallmark each year.  And the ornaments are usually what they love that year.  Anabeth picked out Minnie Mouse and Sophia the 1st this year and when you play or talk to her its all about those two.  Abigail has not picked one out yet but we haven't went to the actual store to look either.  That day is on our Nawlin Family Fun calendar for next week!  :)  Happy Decorating! Keep it Merry and Bright!