It’s beginning to look a little bit like Christmas at our house – Burl bought the tree today despite the absence of all our regular tree-selling haunts like grocery stores and the Immaculate Conception lot. However, he found a beautiful 7 foot Douglas fir and it’s now up in our den. True to form, he bought it and got it in the house and I decorated – not exactly my favorite thing to do but somehow that’s how the division of labor has fallen in our family. He will also do the outside decorating while I finish off the rest of the inside later in the week.
We were in Des Moines last year for Christmas and didn’t have a tree here so it was fun to get out the ornament boxes tonight and reminisce as I put them on the tree – we make a habit of buying ornaments when we travel and already have quite a collection in our short life together. When the girls were little their Grammie always gave them a special ornament and I kept a record (yes, I was anal-retentive then too!) of them and when they moved away and had their first Christmas trees they took the ornaments with them. Now it’s fun to see their trees and notice the decorations from when they were kids. Naturally I’ve already started this same tradition with our grandkids.
I was vascillating between colored or white lights but discovered several boxes of clear ultra-burst lights that hubby apparently got on clearance last year so I used those and they really light up the tree. While he was dozing I hauled out a couple of boxes of old lights marked “not used in 2002″ while tells me if we haven’t used them for 5 years, the chances of using them ever again are somewhere between slim and none! Hope the trash men enjoy them on Thursday!
Now I need to get a white sheet to put under the tree (reminds me of my mother trying to imitate snow!) and then cover it completely up with all the gifts that are wrapped and sitting on the pool table downstairs. Next up on the “to do” list is Christmas cards – they are patiently sitting on my desk and all I need to do is address them and write notes on the majority of them – at the rate I’m going I should have said “Happy Valentine’s Day” instead of “Merry Christmas” on them!
