Houston, we have a Christmas Tree!

The end of the year is my favorite time of year. Starting from Thanksgiving and heading all the way through to the new year. And I am one of those "crazies" who likes to listen to Christmas music year round, so December is always a great time for me. I love the baking, the wrapping of gifts, the making of lists (yeah, that falls under a whole other list of crazy traits to which I cling!), the Christmas songs, the smell of pine, doing advent activities with the kids.... ah, I love this time of year!

Okay, so this year the kids and I had the great opportunity to spend Thanksgiving and the front part of December in Georgia with my mom and sister and her family. (What a great trip that was, and I will blog about that later and about the serious tragedy that befell my mom's computer while I was there!)And as a result of us having an early Christmas treat of being out there, here we are almost in the middle of December, and I return to my house just looking like a regular house, no Christmas tree, no decorations, no baking smells wafting on the breeze...

And then that all changed yesterday! I think having his family gone for three weeks (added on to the pressures of end of the semester craziness and finals and projects)pushed my hubby over the edge a little. For the past 10 years of our marriage, Christmas has been my job. I decorate, I bake, I buy gifts for everyone...I am Christmas Woman :-) But this year Scottie decided that instead of the fake tree that we have been putting up since we have been in Utah, he wanted a real one. Like get a permit from the Forestry Department, climb a mountain and cut one down. Rugged...manly...great memory making Christmas tree hunting. But after finding out that we could only go tree hunting in areas that were 2+ hours away, he settled for the next best thing...Lowe's. So we pile the kids in the car, head to Lowe's and are disgusted to find out that their trees were $35-$60....yikes, when did inflation hit the tree market? So off the Wally World we head...they are always cheaper than everyone else. Only to find out that they aren't carrying live trees this year - bummer. Over to Home Depot we head...same situation as Lowe's, so we leave. Our little head hung low, dragging our puppy dog tails behind us. When what do we see? A fenced in tree farm in a parking lot! Yeah, there is still hope for us! We head over there excited at the prospect of a cheaper (live!) tree coming home with us. We all hop out of the van and dash to the lot. Lovely fur trees all in nice neat rows! Beautiful, living trees. Delicious smelling trees. $40, $50, $60, $80 trees?!!! Ouch! I really missed the newspaper article mentioning the price increase in evergreens! Down go our ears and tails and my little litter of sad puppies trudge through the lot trying to find any less expensive tree that might be hiding among it's pricier relatives.

Scott finds it. He loves it! He wants it! It is as tall as I am. (which is not a bad thing, 5' is a nice height for people and trees) It was the 8" middle section that was bare that concerned me. For some reason, this Charlie Brown of a tree decided to have either a fast growth spurt and ignored adding branches, or fell asleep while growing and hadn't spit out any branches for 8". Something happened and it looked like two trees had been glued one on top of the other with the trunk of one in the middle. But Scott loved it. And to have him excited about Christmas, heck, I'd have taken a 2' branch that would hold only one ornament! (Plus the fact that it was in the $20 range, made it seem all the better) And the nice man even gave us a discount on top of that. (I think the man was excited that the Charlie Brown tree was finding a home!) In the van with giggles and huge smiles piled all the kids. In the van with a happy heart that it had found a family went the tree. In the van with a hunter's pride went my hubby. And in the van with a great love for my cute family who was "playing" Christmas with me went myself.

We got home and the proud hunter set up the tree...and put the lights on. Well, put the first string of lights on. And the angel, which is WAY out of order, she usually goes on towards the end, but he was doing it, so I sat back and just watched! (Our angel is a flying one, so she looks quite different from other angels. She is flying sideways and reaching out to the star and the star is lit from the tree lights and we love her!) I wish I could have gotten the video camera to work, it would have captured the mood so much better than a still camera, but imagine me with Christmas music going in the background, kids dancing around the house, excited and giddy. Scott trying to put a string of lights on the tree. Very Christmasy, right? Then add the vocals. Scott getting on to the kids "get out from behind the tree", "You're going to fall if you keep running around, stop running", "would you guys calm down!", "I'm going to send you to your room if you can't be quiet!" Not as Christmasy, but it was still wonderful! It reminded me of the movie "A Christmas Story."
They had the Santa hat and everyone wanted to wear it, then Garrett decided to play Santa and took Owen on his lap and listened while Owen told him everything he wanted to get for everyone. (He wants to get a Littlest Pet Shop for Tig, an RC car for Garrett, a little car for Daddy, blanket for Hoppy and mommy...and a puppy dog for him!)

So the kids, seeing dad's frustration level rising a bit as he walked circles around the tree putting lights on, decided to exit stage left and go play in the kitchen. And being the good Christian children they are, what do you play with Christmas music in the background and the Christmas tree being set up? Why Dreidle, of course! They play this every year as we set up the tree...I'm really not sure how it started, but I love that they made it part of our Christmas traditions :-) It adds a nice flair to the craziness!

After daddy finished his string of lights,he had reached his Christmas playtime max (you have to start slowly! But this gives me great hopes for future years of him putting up ornaments as well!) and he went to rest and let the rest of us finish decorating. This tree is a little smaller than our usual, so I had to be selective as to which ornaments made it up this year. It is a straight angel tree, no butterflies, no silly ornaments, only our favorites. (I'll bet you can't guess which one was Owen's favorite?) So our tree is now happily covered in angel ornaments of all kinds. Each year the kids make a photo ornament to add to the tree, so I have pictures of my angels all over the tree as well!

So at the end of the night, the tree was up, the nativity was set up, our advent calendars were put in place, everyone chose their stocking and stocking holder,
the kids had added their hand prints to our tree skirt for this year, and I was able to go to sleep in a well "Christmas-ified" house! Ah... that is how you are supposed to sleep this time of year!