O Tannenbaum

For the first time in years, we have a real tree in the house. At one point, I swore I would never have a fake, but then I won an artificial tree at a raffle, and it was oh-so-easy to put it together, plug it in and start hanging ornaments. No vaccuuming needles, no worrying about the water spilling from the stand, no 'now what do we do with this thing' on New Year's Day. And the smell, just plug in some potpourri and you're ready to go.

But this year, the kids are getting bigger, and we thought we'd give the artificial tree a year off. We actually considered cutting one down for about 30 seconds, but I have this memory of a hatching in a tree we cut down when I was a kid. It was too great a leap to go from fake to infested in a single year.

So, we went out last night to pick out our tree from the corner lot before the big storm hit. The first challenge: The trees were all laying down. "Sleeping" as Maggie called it. So before we could pick out, we had to pick one up! Then, we couldn't remember the type of tree we used to get: Noble or Douglas or Grand? Oh my. So, after trooping around the Christmas tree lot, picking up trees and watching the wind blow them back down, we decided it was a Noble fir we needed. Except there was a problem: The price.

Holy Moly! I don't remember spending more than $40 for a tree ever in my life. And last night, we weren't going to get off that cheap...let me tell you. So, after sticker shock wore off and it was clear that you really couldn't tell the difference between a Noble fir and a Douglas fir, we settled on a Douglas fir. We also decided 6 feet were better than 8 feet and by golly, flocking was out of the question. We didn't spend $40, but we didn't spend in the 3 figures either.

We tied the tree to the roof of the car and headed home. It was late, so we put it in the garage for the night. This morning we brought it into the house and it was my job to string the lights. As I was standing in the living room trying to remember how to untangle ropes of lights, La Nina came into 'help'.

She stood there for a minute, took a deep breath and asked, "What smells?"

"What does it smell like?" I asked.

"Camping, only its inside. It's not the tree, is it?

"Yep. I'm pretty sure it's the tree."

Her final words as she left the living room, "Gross, Mom."

So, the gross tree is in the house, lit up, and ornamentless. Hopefully tomorrow, we'll wrap up this three day long process and let me tell ya', next year, the fake could be back!