Oh Christmas Tree

For the first time in our nearly four years of marriage, Josh and I are celebrating with a Christmas tree of our very own! Over the past four years, December has been the time of change in our life, whether it was moving home from school or to another country we seem to have always managed to NOT be in our own place for the Christmas season. I, therefore, was very excited when we woke up on Saturday morning and set off on the grand adventure of finding the perfect tree to grace our apartment with. However, no one told us how inexperienced we would feel or how challenging it could be to find that elusive Christmas tree. We forgot the tarp to put on the top of the car (at least we remembered rope to the tie the tree down with), and then, when wandering through the seemingly endless rows of perfect trees we realized that eventually WE would have to make a decision. There were no parents to veto our choice of a tree nor to advise that this tree was to bushy or that tree would be too tall, and I must admit, we were both a bit worried that we'd end up with the "wrong" tree. Fortunately we did not, so after about an hour of wandering the lot with my brothers and good friends the Johnsons we committed to a tree, Josh put the saw to the stump, and at the cry of "Timber!" we had our very first Christmas tree.



The next round of inadequacy came for me when I stared at my naked tree all nicely propped up in its tree stand (after having been wrestled up three flights of stairs and squeezed through the doorway) and the three new boxes of Christmas lights lying on the floor beside it. I realized in that moment that my mother is the queen of lights and I had never bothered to take lessons on how one bestows those twinkling beauties on to the tree. Do you start at the top and go down? Or start at the bottom and go up? I went with the latter, 20 minutes later and utilization of my brothers hands, my Christmas tree was adorned with lights Mary Frances style. All that was left were the ornaments which, thanks to a long standing tradition between my brother Galen and I, I have quite the assortment of beautiful glistening globes. At last, we have our own tree, the beginnings of our own Christmas season, and our apartment will have that lovely Christmas-y glow for the next month. I love this time of year!