The ugliest Christmas Tree

Well I've been meaning to post this for about a month now. It just seems that every time I sit down to blog, I'm needed somewhere else or I need to do something else or.... I need to just make it a priority, I guess.

Anyway, we tried a new place for our Christmas tree this year. It's a farm with trees, not a tree farm, and the guy charges $25 (on your honor) for any tree on the place you want to cut. You drive around until you see some trees you might like and then you pile out and tromp around and decide if any of them might be your tree. A lot of them have 13 backs and some of them are just laughable. None of them are groomed, so all of them are pretty au natural.

The kids had a delightful time tromping around, looking at deer poop, and Kailin even spotted a 6 point buck bounding across a field (her Daddy's going to get her out hunting yet!). We let the kids ride with "real seatbelts" throughout the farm as we were the only car on the place for most of our visit and bundling them in and out of their seats seemed just kind of ridiculous. They were ecstatic about that! We had "The Muppet Christmas Carol" playing, there was a bite in the air but it wasn't cold....it was the perfect day for it. At one point, Kailin noted (in a rather disgusted voice), "I smell like....TREE!"

We finally decided on a fir that we thought looked nice. It was a different "feel" than our normal trees - less bulky and a little branchier. I was ready for a change. I thought. We got it home and got it in (only two cuts this year!) and...well....I didn't like it so much. It just didn't look right. In fact, I was beginning to feel like it was maybe the ugliest tree we've ever had.

But Steve put the lights on it and then the kids and I hung ornaments one afternoon and you know - it wasn't the ugliest tree we've ever had. It was my favorite. The way the branches are formed there are plenty of places to hang ornaments out toward the tips as well as in toward the trunk. The lights sort of give the whole tree a glow. I'm mixing tenses here and I don't even care - that's how much I love the tree.

That's the post I would have posted if I'd posted it when I meant to. Instead I now have to finish this by saying that for reasons still unknown to us, we literally watched our beautiful tree brown and crisp up over a matter of days. We cut it ourselves and watered it religiously, so I'm not sure what went wrong. I'm sad that tomorrow we will be taking it down - the earliest we have ever done so in the history of our family.

I do think that it was a good lesson for me to see the beauty in all things and to remember that sometimes the things that are most beautiful in our lives appear in places and ways we least expect. I"m going to come back to that soon. Just wait. :o)

So Thankful

This post is a little late. Our Thanksgiving this year was a little on the nuts side. Not nearly as nuts as our Christmas used to be before we had kids, but nuts all the same! Thanksgiving morning we kind of lazed around just a bit, enjoyed a little of the parade, and then were off to celebrate with the Gannaway side. We visited with both sides of Steve's family and had a wonderful day of it, came home full (although the careful planning of when to leave so that the overtired children could fall asleep in the car, but only if they were able to stay sleeping when we got home so that we avoided the whole "nap in the car, never sleep at night" scenario" meant that although the adults were feeling fat and happy, the kids were hungry about the time we headed home. Since reheating leftover Thanksgiving dinner is not a good "in the car" event, we actually stopped at McDonald's for the kids. I hate patronizing businesses on Thanksgiving since it justifies them being open and thus takes someone away from their family, but in this case, I was so glad they were open!) and happy and made an early evening of it. Friday morning we got up and had a bit of a lazy morning again with just a little black Friday shopping online for me. Then we were off to celebrate Thanksgiving on the Schultz side. It was another fantastic day with family and we finally made it home in time to put the adults to bed for the night. Saturday was spent decorating the house and Sunday after church we went on a Christmas Tree adventure (that's another post) and finished out the weekend with the local Christmas Parade. Yesterday was a day of recovery and today I am sitting down to count my blessings (at least publicly - I actually try to count them daily and of course focused on them over the holiday weekend).

I am truly thankful for each and every blessing in my life. This year I am most thankful for my health, for my wonderful and amazing husband who truly has stood beside me in times of sickness and in health, in times of abundance and in times of lean, when I'm happy and when I'm sad, through every day of my life since our first date, for my beautiful children and for my amazing God who makes it all possible. I am also thankful for a home that not only provides shelter over our heads, but is filled with love and warmth the whole year through. I'm thankful that my husband has a job and is able and willing to provide for our family. I know some of those things sound cliche, but they are also things too often taken for granted. I want to remember not to think for a minute that I am owed anything in this life - that I am blessed by each and every thing that makes up my day to day life. These things are all privileges, not rights and I should remember more often to treat them as such. May this be a year for remembering blessings every day.

A little Christmas before Thanksgiving

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The Ten Minute Turkey

Today Kailin brought home a book of Thanksgiving recipes that her class put together. Her contribution was "Trke". The recipe, as she dictated to her teacher, is: "Get a turkey from the farm. Put it in the oven for 10 minutes. Take it out and put it in a pot. Wait until Thanksgiving and eat it!". Priceless. Absolutely priceless!!

Patty Cake

Heard this morning in our house... "Patty cake, patty cake, bake your hands". "Bake your hands??" "Oops, no. I didn't mean that."

Constipated dinosaurs

The other morning we were reading a dinosaur book and Colby matter of factly announced that "dinosaurs can't crap". This stumped me on two levels. First, we don't use the word "crap" around our house so I was wondering where he'd heard it. Second, I wondered just what inspired him to believe that dinosaurs can't do it. The book was about a dinosaur having friends over to play...so no toilet habits were involved. I asked for clarification and was met with confirmation that my son believed that our prehistoric friends were interminably constipated. Hmmm.... Finally he demonstrated to me what he meant. CLAP. Colby believes that dinosaurs can't clap. I'm guessing he's right - but in any case it's a far more probable thing than that they can't crap.

Caught in the Act

The other day I let the kids go out in the backyard to play on the playset Steve built for them this summer. They were given strict orders to stay on the swings and not to climb up into the tower. Before anyone goes off about me being an overprotective mother, let me comment that the reason for the mandate is that Steve hadn't yet been able to reattach the slide that blew off in the 70mph wind storm we had the other week and I didn't want the kids forgetting about the gaping hole and falling out the front side of the tower. But back to our story... the kids were out there playing on the swings which isn't particularly fun for Colby at the moment because he can't get on the swing himself and also hasn't quite mastered the leg pump technique to keep himself going. I happened to glance out just in time to see my daughter pushing her brother on the swing and laughing with him. It's moments like those that remind me that my children DO love each other and that all the times I encourage them to treat each other with kindness really do sink in. As soon as she took a break, I called her over to praise her up. That, too, was a good lesson. She ran right back over and asked Colby if he'd like another turn on the swing - even moms need a reminder sometimes that kindness breeds kindness and praise goes further than admonition.