It's Christmas All Over Again

I joined the land of artificial Christmas trees again. We bought one our first year married, and were so incredibly poor that all we could afford was the cheapest the BX had. (BX is the military version of K-Mart.) Let me tell you, that tree was cheap in every sense of the word. I think it invented some new meanings as well. Ugly doesn't quite describe it, but we lived with it for 8 or 9 years before I finally said enough is enough. (Artificial trees are never meant to last this long to begin with, and ugly ones like we had do NOT improve with age.) Are you beginning to understand why I stand where I do on the real tree stance? But this was the year when I said, maybe, possibly, I could go back to artificial.

So I bought a fake tree today. Actually, I bought 4 fake trees today. We have a set of 3 Alpine trees in the dining room and I bought another to put with the set. That way I can dedicate one to each kid and either hang their collectible ornaments on them, or the ornaments that they've each made.

I bought an entryway tree because it's fiber optic and the lights are broke. I'm not really into fiber optic trees, but this one looks good and is very full, and with my own light on it'll rock.

I bought what I thought was a 4' tree as a second for the living room because it was on clearance. No matter how sparse it looks, I can fill it in with big things. Becky wants to do a stuffed animal tree and that'll fill it quite nicely. Plus you know I've got those big, shiny balls that are great at filling gaps. (I got more today on clearance.) Turns out that tree is 6.5'.

But the best tree was the large one I got. It'll be my main tree. It's very nice, very real-looking and is pre-lit. That there is one great feature. Someone is a genius who invented that. I know it's been out for a while, but remember I've been living in the land of real trees for about 9 years, and somebody has yet to figure out how to grow lights on those pines destined for cutting. I am so thrilled with this fake tree that I spent my evening fluffing branches (did I mention that I HATE fake trees?!), tranferring ornaments and throwing out that real dead tree. I spent the next hour vacuuming up needles. At least the ones that weren't embedded in our feet. I have to say that I'm liking what I see. I have this plan that we take the tree to the attic and set it up there so that I'll have to do a minimum of fluffing next year. I'll let you know how that works for me next year.

My daughter is a bit concerned with all the trees I got. She's thinking we'll be living in a forest next hoiday season. Who knows, we very well may. But it'll be brightly lit and glittery and it just doesn't get much better than that. I don't know what she's worried about though. She's the weird one who puts toilet paper down on our own toilet seats because the boys have germs. I about died when I came downstairs and saw that this morning. She forgot to flush the paper protection and I caught her. It's no wonder we go through so much toilet paper here. What do people without kids do for entertainment?

She also had leftover ketchup packs from lunch today and was scheming ways to use them. Besides putting them under car tires, she thought it would be brilliant to put them under the toilet seat, right where the little feet go so that when someone sits down it'll either squirt into the toilet or onto their legs. I was the spoil sport that said NOT IN MY HOUSE YOU DON'T!

Micah's favorite best friend is Woody, from Toy Story. Becky loved the movie when she was little, so we bought her a Woody doll for Christmas when she was 2. It's been a favorite of each of the kids at one point. Micah has fallen in love like none of the others did. But poor Woody is showing his age. We bought Micah a replacement and he was thrilled. But the replacement could only scuba dive in the toilet and go through the white water rapids of the washer so many times before he, too, started to age. So we bought a third, but that one just wasn't up to par for some reason. My in-laws got him a Woody and Jesse set for Christmas. He was more than thrilled. In fact, today he took 3 Woodys and Jesse shopping with us. You just can't leave a best friend behind.

Micah spent the evening admiring some of his treasure trove from Christmas. He just cracks us up.


Micah just sat and giggled at the dog in her kennel yesterday. It was so funny that Luke had to join in. I'm not sure what they thought was amusing, but it was for-real belly laughs going on.


And here's our new fake tree, complete with lots of big, shiny balls. I still cannot believe that I set it all up only to take it all down in a week. But consider it my Christmas gift to myself. All 4 trees I got today were just over $100 so I'm thrilled nigh unto death.