I love going to a Christmas tree farm and picking out a tree, hauling it home, putting on the lights and the ornaments, playing Christmas music while we decorate everything...
Except, perhaps not this year.
The time involved for the length of time it would stay up is not an efficient use of my resources. We leave for Germany on December 14th, so that would be less than half a month of Christmas. Plus, we would either need to pack everything up before the 14th, while packing to to to Europe, or come back to a very dead tree with needles spread throughout the house....
So I did something I never thought I'd do. I bought a fake tree. A pre-lit fake tree that I put together in less than 5 minutes, including getting it out of the original packaging. I did a little rearranging of branches, but overall, it's pretty quick to set up a fake tree. It was either a fake tree, or no tree at all, and I just couldn't see not having a tree for the babies' first Christmas.
And, I figure we'll run into this problem every other year, so this will be a useful option in the future. Now I need to decide if I get out the ornaments, or have a second set of basic things to put on the tree. I'm debating ribbon bows or gingerbread ornaments, something to keep it not bare, but that I can put on and take off without a lot of thought. I debated making baby hand imprint ornaments and then giving them away at the end of the season, but we'll have to see if there's enough time for that or not.
On another note, we're about to get unexpected house guests. A member of our church, and one of my mini-parish members, is from Cameroon. His wife and son got a visa to come to the states, but were given only 4 days to leave the country. He currently works as a certified nurse assistant staying in someone's home every night as a caretaker, so he doesn't have a home of his own right now. They'll stay with us for two weeks as they look for a place to live. Really you would think I would learn not to do things like this, but I'm kind of hoping it works out.
If it does, I'm hoping they'd like to stay until we get back from New Mexico. They could watch the house for us while we're gone and I wouldn't need to worry too much. Of course, we did learn enough that we are giving them a two week trial period before even mentioning this as a possibility.
Plans for NM are afoot (and keeping me up at night). Speaking of night, I think I'll try to sleep tonight. That would be a change...I don't need the kids to keep me up at night, my own insomnia does that for me.
2 comments:
If you look at new ornaments, keep in mind that next year you will have two roaming curious little guys who are eager to "help" with the tree. Think "shatterproof" :)
(Of course, with cats, you may already have a relatively shatterproof set of decorations...I know my furballs think the tree is a special playground just for their amusement covered in prey to be hunted).
Thanks Kristi :) I don't have shatterproof ornaments now...instead we have a system in which special ornaments go up on top, away from window sills or furniture and cat proof ornaments go on lower branches. Maybe next year I'll have a box of breakables that go on late when kids are in bed.
This year I'm thinking gingerbread stars, a popcorn garland (maybe) and some sort of ribbons. I bought pre made dough (which I also never do) . I don't want to have to store anything more because it would just get confusing.
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