The Christmas Tree

The Christmas Spirit has found our house and it is moving in with full force! We went on Saturday to find our Christmas tree - not just pick it out of a lot, but to actually wander amongst neatly sowed rows of pines and pick the most fabulous tree we could find. It was cold for Texas - Paul was wearing shorts and nearly shivering, Thomas was crying because he was afraid of the tractor and Sophia wandered into the trees to end up with sap covered hands rolled in dirt and pine needles. Yay for the Christmas Spirit!! But, damnit, we were going to have FUN!!!

We found the perfect tree, which didn't really seem that big compared to all the other ones surrounding it. So, Paul sawed the trunk and I gave it the final push over after photo documenting the whole wonderful experience. The people shook it out, wrapped it up, helped us load it up and then we were off. After a few miles we had to pull over due to strange noises coming from above which turned out to be the tree slowly slipping off the top. The teenager who tied it on did a crappy job. We retied it, loaded up on some caffeine from Starbucks and headed home.

We brought the tree in, unwrapped it and it almost blew the windows out of our living room like Christmas vacation it was so big!! It is 9 feet tall and VERY wide!! Paul actually could not quite reach the top with a step stool to cut the wrapping all the way off. Paul is 6'6" tall - a sign that the tree is clearly too big. It looked so small out there in the forest . . .

Because the tree is so big we had to rearrange all our furniture, and it's all shifted slightly to the left so that all seats can see the TV. We put it in a stand that seems a little small for the size of the tree, but we had no idea that there are different size tree stands. I guess you live and learn. The trunk is very crooked and at one point nearly splits in 2, so it took five tries of anchoring it in the stand before it looked like it was fairly stable in all directions. Who knows. I am just waiting for the cat the take a drink and the whole thing to come tumbling down.

We are having lots of family come for Christmas, and so this tree will easily nestle all the gifts that will come, and it will spread all the Christmas cheer we can stand. It will be beautiful, if not a bit too big, and provide a lesson in just how big a tree we should consider in the future. But, it's environmentally friendly and smells good. I just hope there's not a squirrel in there somewhere . . .