O Tannenbaum

It seemed like Thanksgiving was later than usual this year, because Christmas is sneaking up FAST. So we decided to take advantage of last evening's snow flurries to go get a Christmas tree. As we were walking out the door, however, we realized we didn't find our old Christmas tree stand amongst the rest of our holiday decorations in the attic. OK, change of plans--we'd go to Target to buy a stand, then go get a tree. Of course, not only was Target so mobbed that we couldn't find parking, but then when Gretchen went in they had already sold out of tree stands. DOH! And by that time, Mädchen had become set on walking through the neighboring PetSmart store to see the birds and hamsters and cats and "doggies getting haircuts," which we gave into. (One of the little surprises of being a parent was that going to the pet store can be just as entertaining for a two-year-old as going to the zoo, and it's much closer to home. The only downside was that being there made us really miss having a dog. Not enough to actually get another one, but still.) Anyway, by the time we finally found a tree stand at a local hardware store, it was too late to go get a tree.

Instead, since I went out with friends last night (I was finally collecting on a bet for scoring highest among the four of us on my NCAA tournament bracket this spring) and had one glass of wine too many and was feeling a little sluggish, we decided to skip church this morning (tsk, tsk) and go find a tree at a nearby shopping center instead. Since it was freezing cold and very windy, we weren't nearly as selective as we normally are about finding the perfect tree. Instead we very quickly raced through to scope out the selection...



...Gretchen found one within three minutes that looked good at first glance, and it was too cold to look around for anything better...



...and once we got home we realized it was one of the nicer trees we'd ever chosen, and by noon it was fully decorated...



Let the Christmas caroling begin...