Monday, December 8, 2008

O Christmas Tree...

With Amaya being sick on Saturday, I sent my dear husband to pick out our Christmas tree. I think from now on, I'll always send Steve out by himself to pick it out. He brought home the most beautiful 8 foot Premium Frasier Fir Tree!! We probably won't buy anything other than a Frasier Fir and I place most of the blame for this on my mom. She has expensive taste when it comes to Christmas trees... actually, she has expensive taste when it comes to most everything and great taste she has!

Last year at this time, I was very pregnant and Steve volunteered to string the lights on the tree so I wouldn't have to bend, twist, and reach. I guess Steve didn't like putting the lights on the tree, because this year I'm back to the task! We usually have 1200-1400 lights on our tree and this is my sister, Carol's fault. Several years ago - pre-Steve, while I was visiting Dan and Carol in Nebraska, I helped decorate their church. Carol taught me how to put lights on the tree. You shove the lights WAAAY back to the trunk and then wrap each branch with lights and repeat. It's A LOT of work, but the end result is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

We weren't sure how Amaya would do around the tree. Would she pull the ornaments off? Would she try to eat the branches? Would she knock the tree over? So far, so good, she's hasn't gone near the tree. She was fascinated with the lights and liked to play with the ornaments while they were in the box. I thought maybe we'd have to only decorate the tree half-way up, but I put more "baby-friendly" ornaments on the bottom, so if she does decide to explore we'll be okay.

I'm relieved that we've gotten the house and tree decorated, however my "to do list" still feels like a mile long. We have two more Christmas presents to buy for, wrapping, baking, and our Christmas cards left. Manageable, right?

We're about to receive anywhere from 6-10 inches of snow in the next 24 hours. I'm anxiously looking out my window at work waiting for that first snowflake. Bring on the snow!