Christmas Preparations: Finding a Tree

I had it in my head that the kids needed to see the reindeer and camel at a local nursery. It seemed the Christmas thing to do... and I really wanted to see the critters myself! We figured that we'd bundle everyone up, see the animals, buy a tree, stop at Dick's for burgers on our way home, and then get the tree set up. Great in theory... we didn't expect the nursery to have insanely expensive trees! So, we saw the reindeer, saw the camel, saw the tree prices, and promptly headed back to our car. We did get burgers ... and then drove straight to Lowes for a more affordable tree.

While at Lowes, Annika proclaimed that every tree she saw was "PERFECT!" I think if she had her way, we'd have an entire tree farm in our front room. While she was busy falling in love with each tree, Conor was busy giving me a heart attack; let me tell you how nerve wracking it is to have a two-foot-nothing two-year-old wandering around aisles and aisles of trees that have the uncanny ability to basically envelop him at every turn. I spent the majority of our tree shopping time shouting, "CONOR! WHERE ARE YOU????" His "Here I am, MAMA!" replies didn't really help because it was a little voice from amongst the branches and boughs.... stress, I tell ya!

Finally, we picked a tree, loaded it up, and headed home to make our house smell like Christmas.

At home, we rearranged our furniture to make room for our tree and got to work on stringing the lights on it. To keep the kids busy, I pulled out their little 12" artificial tree and let them decorate it with their "doesn't matter if they get dropped" ornaments. We basically spiraled the lights around the tree; I know my dad was trying to coach us from the great beyond, but it didn't really work with the time we allotted for the lights. My dad was a perfectionist when it came to stringing lights on our Christmas trees when I was a kid. Our kids will not say the same thing about us when they're grown. ;)

We got the tree up and decorated (stay tuned for pictures) and now it is busy sucking up cups of water each day and littering our carpet with countless pine needles. Our vacuum is probably cursing our choice not to get an artificial tree a few years ago. But that's OK.... we're not officially festive and have a place to put our wrapped presents (much to Conor's delight; he tried to open one of his as soon as he saw his name on the the tag).

Hey, look! A reindeer!

That's one tall camel!

Here he comes!

Not our tree ... the search continues

THE tree for us!