Most nights when I think about my day, I end up with a mental list of all the ways that I could have been a better mom. But every now and then, my kids do something that makes me feel like I must be doing something right.

When I picked Trevor up from his "date" with his grandparents recently, I discovered he had used his $15 dollars to buy a small blue artificial Christmas tree for his room. His grandparents always take him for a shopping trip and he usually comes home with a plastic action figure, toy car or a stuffed animal. But on this shopping trip, he was insistent that he just had to have his own Christmas tree for his room. My mother-in-law told me how he had tightly clutched the tree all the way home and talked excitedly about how he was taller than the 40 inch tree.

As he showed off the tree to me, he had a huge grin on his face bigger than when he walked into Disney World for the first time. I try to show the kids that in addition to the joy of giving, the best part of the holidays is appreciating the little things; the lights, the decorations, the apple cider and hearing Silent Night on the radio. I really thought my kids hadn’t been paying attention, but as is often the case, they were actually listening.

When we got home, he set up the tree in his room so he could see the lights on his tree when he first opened his eyes in the morning. He then declared that we take the tree down to Florida when we head south for the holidays because it would be lonely if we left it home. He spent the next 10 minutes carefully making paper ornaments for his tree out of construction paper. I wiped away my tears as he placed the paper ornament on the tree with "I WUV MOMY" written in blue marker.

As he plugged in the lights, he exclaimed "Finally, it looks like Christmas in my room." As I lay on the floor with my six-year-old son looking at the tree he bought, I couldn’t help but thinking that this just might be as good as life gets.