For most of you who know me, you know that there is always a Christmas tree up in our house within a few days after Halloween. In the past this has partially been because we have always gone to visit family for Christmas, so I want to get the decorations up early enough to enjoy them before we have to leave town, but it is also because I absolutely love the Christmas season (and how it helps to make the cold, grey winters feel a little bit warmer). This year things were a little different, because we are living with my grandma and she was less than excited about the idea of having a Christmas tree up before Thanksgiving, and because of Michael’s work schedule this year we are not going to be able to go visit my family for Christmas. So, the only Christmas decorations I’ve had up for a while now are our stockings (which I hung on hooks from the bookshelf downstairs in our “living room” because the fireplace upstairs doesn’t have a mantle that we could hang stockings from). And then last week for family home evening Michael asked me to pick up a pack of construction paper so that we could make paper chains for the boys to count down the days until Christmas. Kolby, Eli, and Camden enjoyed making their paper chains, hanging them up from the ceiling downstairs, and taking one ring from their chains each night before bedtime. So, when Michael had a day off last week we decided to get the boys all ready in the morning and go looking for a Christmas tree. I had looked online, hoping to find a nearby Christmas tree farm where we could take the boys and cut down our own tree, but the nearest one I could find was about a 45-minute drive from here, and we didn’t want to go that far. So we decided to go to the Christmas tree lot on the corner. The lot was closed when we arrived, so we took the boys Christmas shopping for each other instead. After lunch we headed home, and were excited to see that the lot was open. We unloaded all the boys from the van and they started running up and down the rows and trees, as we started looking at price tags on each one. We were hoping to find a decent tree for somewhere around $20 to $30, but were surprised that all the nice looking trees were about $50. There was a row of sparse, sad-looking little trees in the back of the lot for about $25, but we decided to figure something else out. Maybe you are reading this and thinking that $50 isn’t so bad for a nice Christmas tree – I don’t know – we have never bought a fresh tree before, though. When we were first married and living in the Y-Mount apartments at BYU, the rule was no fresh Christmas trees because they were a fire hazard, so my mom got us this nice little fake tree that we have used in our apartments ever since then. I love my memories of picking out a tree with the family when I was young, though, and figured that once we had a house we would get a real tree. I guess maybe we’ll start that tradition next year. We ended up coming home and pulling my grandma’s fake tree out of her basement storage room. It already had lights on it (since I put them on for her when I visited her once before I was married and the lights got left on the tree since then), so that was one less thing we had to do. The tree wasn’t very sturdy, but switching it to a larger tree stand helped a little with that, even though it still leans to one side a bit. We found a small box of ornaments in Grandma’s closet and put those up, and then pulled out the boys’ new ornaments (I get them each a new ornament each year, and I was excited when I found these cute dinosaur ornaments when I was with my mom at Canterbury Gardens down in San Diego, and when I found that they were affordable). The boys got to open their new ornaments and put them on the tree. We tried to put all the ornaments up high enough that Isaac couldn’t reach them, so it looks a little funny with the tree being mostly bare for the first three feet or so, but it works.
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