Crazy Fo(u)r Boys and one precious little girl: O Tannenbaum

Christmas has really sneaked up on us this year. I guess with having a newborn around, it is hard to focus on the impending festivities. We set aside this past Tuesday to go pick out our tree. We stopped in our usual Christmas tree farm (aka Lowe's) and were disppointed with the selection. It didn't help that the area was not lit and it was freezing cold! Perhaps it will be a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree year, I thought to myself. It was only the 7th of December. How could all the good ones be gone already?

I remembered my brother and his new bride had purchased theirs from Costco. We decided to head over there and pray they had something better. Turns out Costco has managed to devise a plan to cure the common indecisive citizen such as myself. After you pay for the tree inside, you show your receipt to the very friendly employee, John, and he hands you a tree. It's already wrapped up and ready to go. A bit shocked that I was no longer going to stand around for 30 minutes struggling to commit to "the perfect one", I fought my new-found freedom. "Well, how do we know it's not going to have a big bald spot?"

Pointing to the one tree on display, he attempted to calm my fears, "We just pulled this one from the pile and set it up." Admittedly, John didn't really strike me as a tree fluffer. It was a beautiful tree. I felt a little better but still had suspicions. I probably would have given up more of a fight but Holt was upset in the car and we were all ready to get home.

That was Day 1 of the Christmas Tree. We bought it. We brought it inside and set it in the stand.

Day 2 Nothing happened with the tree, though kitty had already set up her usual watch spot direcly under it.

Day 3 I began to light the tree. In the past years, I typically use 3 long strands. When I pulled the strands out of storage, one strand worked as long as you touched it in the right way--you know the ones. If you hold them wrong, they all turn off but if you shake it they turn back on. I got them all to come on and began to light the tree. I didn't get far before I was ready for the next strand. I plugged in the next set and found only half of those lights worked. Unplugged. Tried strand three, which for some reason turned out to be a strand of icicle lights. I dug around in a different location and managed to find two more strands. I was crossing my fingers that these would work. My hopes were to have the tree ready for the kids to hang ornaments when they got home. I strung those two sets and fell way short of lighting the entire tree.

After picking up Hawkins from MDO, we stopped in Walgreens for some more Christmas lights. Surely 400 more would be plenty, considering I already had 500 lights on the tree. I fell short again, but this time only the top 1.5 feet was left unlit. A sense of defeat quickly started to settle in. Ugh! I'll worry with it tomorrow.

Day 4 Another trip to Walgreen's and the tree was now completely lit -- all 1100 bulbs. By 8:30 pm, I had strung the popcorn garland and the wooden read beads. The homemade ornaments had been ready to go for days. I hollered at the troops that it was time to hang the ornaments. Houston glanced up from his Pokemon game, "Maybe later, Mom." I remember as a child hovering around my Mom as she lit the tree, ready to pounce at the word go. Thankfully, Hayes was excited which in turn made Hawkins excited about decorating the tree. And it didn't take long before Houston was right in the mix.

Hayes and Hawkins did an excellent job hanging the ornaments along the bottom branches. Houston managed to hang all of his ornaments tucked way deep into the tree or on the underside of the tree. He did a great job finding secret places to hide the ornaments on the tree where no one could see them.