"O Christmas Tree"

“I hear those sleigh bells ringing and a ging-ging-gingling! Come on it’s lovely weather for a slight ride together with me…” I can’t wait to get our Christmas tree and decorate the house. I think I’m worse this year than last year. In fact I was hoping to head to get the tree this past weekend so that way when we get home from being out of town I can just get down to decorating! Have I mentioned that I have already started listen to Christmas music regularly. Two stations around us have had it playing it all day since the beginning of November, and I’m always listening to it on Pandora when we’re home, background noise is good. Love me the holiday season!! Too bad my desires didn’t pan out quite the way I’d hoped.

When we were growing up Matt and I always had real Christmas trees in our house. Well when we moved away we’d head home for the holidays, and we’d be there for a week or so. The thing with real trees is that you can’t leave it without water or you’ll catch your house on fire. So we settled for a small artificial tree that I would put up each year (side note: this year I think I’m going to put it out upstairs for Lauren, I know she’ll love it). Well after Lauren was born, Matt and I made the decision that we’d be staying home for Christmas (we’re willing to drive to see family on any other holiday). If family wants to join in on our celebrations they were more than welcome to head our direction. I feel like Christmas is for the children (well first and foremost it’s about Jesus and all that God brought us through the birth of his son but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say here).  Lauren and all the other children God may bless us with, should always be able to open their gifts at their house, from under their tree, in their pajama, and then have fun playing with all their new stuff as they wait for a yummy breakfast to grace the our kitchen table. They should never have to wonder how Santa knew to drop off their gifts at _______’s house.  If we lived closer to family I would be more than willing to head to their house on Christmas Eve or on Christmas evening, but none of our family is close enough for a short visit like that. So now that we’re here for this holiday, we have started the tradition of getting a real tree- yippy. This makes me more excited than ever. It’s on the list of best days of the year, right behind heading to the pumpkin patch.

So our first year at home with Lauren we headed to a tree farm where Matt cut down the tree himself. I thought this was so fun and it is something I had always wanted to do. Well, who knew that doing this was so costly!! The trees we wanted were way out of our price range- like $50+. This girl is too frugal to spend that much money on a tree that is just going to be tossed out. They did have some in our price range and we ended up settling on one of those. But they weren’t good Christmas trees. They had floppy limbs and long sparse needles. Plus, the tree didn’t smile like a pine tree at all. I was disappointed but happy all at the same time.

So last year when we geared up for Christmas I was trying to find a better place with better trees, in our price range. My Google searches lead us to a wonderful little nursery about a half hour away.  These trees were already cut, so a little less exciting but they were beautiful and they were super smelly (a very important part for me!) and they were also the perfect price.  The problem was this year I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the name of the place was or how to get there. I remember it visually, what the place looked like and I remember the route number, I thought. Matt was the same way, he couldn’t remember either. Well we wanted to head back to that place so we had to Google it all over again looking for this place. It took me a good half hour to find it but when I did, and called them, they didn’t have any in stock yet- so I guess my need to decorate and jump into the Christmas season a smidge early will have to wait. Maybe I should focus on getting through two birthdays and a turkey day first!