Oh...Christmas Tree

All of the holiday preparations have really caught me off-guard this year. Since when is the first weekend of December the deadline for purchasing a tree? I thought we had weeks, days at least. I was wrong. We decided to pick out a tree today but we should have decided to do it a few days earlier. We missed the great batch of trees at Whole Foods ($50, healthy, and a new tree planted for each tree sold), we missed the ease of shopping at Holy Name (2 days only, Friday and Saturday) and ultimately had to go all the way out to Elmwood to one of those tree lots where the people that run the show sit inside of a trailer collecting large sums of money from suckers like me while half-drunk old men walk around trying to make thirsty, sparse trees look appealing. Our 'helper' spent the entire 30 minutes with us never knowing that his fly was down. Somehow I just didn't think it was my place to point it out, but it made me a bit uncomfortable when he squatted down to 'talk' to La Luz.




At the end of the day we got a decent tree. We paid way too much for it (even though he told us that the price he was 'selling' it to us for was really the price of a 7 ft. tree, not an 8 ft. tree...how predictable) and I am concerned it spent weeks sitting on the back of a truck before even arriving in NOLA, but I think it will do the trick.

On account of my condition I was spared the light-stringing duty this year. Christian kindly tackled that job (for the first time in his life, if you can believe it) and he did not enjoy it one bit. I suppose I cannot permanently retire the job. It would not have been possible for me to do it this year; I could barely get close enough to the tree to hang an ornament.




Even though it is a school night, we let the bug stay up way past her bedtime so she could help put the ornaments on the tree. She enjoyed every minute of it, particularly finding her favorite ones from last year. She is already asking if the presents will be here when she wakes up. Time is one of the trickiest things to explain to a three year old. I wish I could make time go by as slowly for me as it does for her.