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December 10, 2006

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

I'm seeing how many blog entries this month can be titled with a line from a Christmas song. This makes three.

Speaking of the number three, I've been sneezing in threes lately. Anyone who knows me knows that I always sneeze in twos, or at least multiples of two, but NEVER odd numbers. It has really been throwing my life off balance lately and has been causing me a lot of stress.

But that's not the point of this entry (do they ever really have a point, though?).

So anyway, yesterday (I'm speaking in actual yesterdays now-- refer to Naughty or Nice if you don't know what I'm talking about) my parents and I went out to get our Christmas tree. For a number of years now, we've gotten our Christmas tree at Jones Tree Farm (the same place Brent and I got our pumpkins this October). At Jones Tree Farm you can cut down your own tree, but somehow trees always look smaller in the woods so we end up coming home with something enormous. There have been a number of years when access to our living room has been limited due to uninhibited branches reaching across the entryway. This year, "we" decided to get our tree at the church. Church trees are actually really nice, so I don't want it to sound like I was actually disappointed not to chop down my own tree the old fashioned way. It's quite a hike up the mountain at Jones Tree Farm and while I am a proponent of deforestation (less trees, more cell towers, better service!), I think Jesus and his churchly followers did a fine job of it themselves.

Church parking lot:

This is not our church, of course. Our church apparently only had midget trees... I'm sorry, "little people trees." "Little People, Big World" is one of my favorite TV shows, by the way. I'm getting off topic.

I think I picked out a nice, plump, sturdy Christmas tree, but no one else liked it. They thought it would be reminiscent of the year the Christmas tree took over the living room and vetoed my giant tree again. I guess it's for the best... a couple years ago, when the tree was way too big-- my fault of course, I ended up trying to chop it down to size with my mom's electric turkey carving knife. It actually works quite well!

The next tree we came across had a perfect Christmas tree shape, but really flimsy branches. We bought it:

For $80:

We managed to make it all the way home with only one "Dad, is there supposed to be a broken string flapping around?" emergencies. It ended up not being an emergency, and we got home and immediately put the tree in the living room where it fit quite nicely. My dad put the lights up and it's Christmas! Not really, but close:

This morning, my dad woke my mom and me up with breakfast in bed! We had bacon and cheese omlettes and toast, yum! He asked me if I could please be ready to decorate the tree early enough to give us enough time to finish by 1pm when the Patriots game came on. I managed to get my butt downstairs and in tree-decorating order by precisely 12:59pm. Best daughter ever.

We decorated the tree during commercials (just like in the days of yore!) and here's our beautiful, fully saturated Christmas tree!

We have a very... uh... "eclectic" set of ornaments that we put on our tree each year. We have homemade ones from my great grandmother, homemade ones from pre-school (A quick note to Mom-- where are the hand-painted cookie-men I made when I was 4? If they're lost, I might not come home for Christmas this year), and... I lost track of what I was saying, but in conclusion, we have a lot of crazy/awesome ornaments.

This mouse has been impaled through the neck with a ladder. We don't know how but, needless to say, it's on the back of the tree:

Ursula from The Little Mermaid after she retired from her life of zany deep-sea shenanigans to live out her golden years in a retirement community in Florida. Or at least that's what I heard:

Angel Kitty (one of my favorites):

This next picture is of another of my favorite ornaments, the golden spiderweb. As a little kid I liked creepy things... but in a girly cute way. This would probably explain my beautiful little baby-carriage I pushed around the neighborhood with little pink and white lace blankets all wrapped up around my very favorite... rubber bat. My mom recalls a certain neighbor's shock and horror when she asked to see my baby doll. Think again! Another of my favorite tricks was to leave toy rats around the house for the maids to find. Who didn't love a sweet little angel like me? But I digress... The spiderweb ornament belonged to my grandma and I was sooooo jealous. A spiderweb Christmas ornament? Who wouldn't want one of those?! I very generously told my grandma that if she didn't want such an ugly old ornament junking up her beautiful Christmas tree that I would kindly take it back to my house with me. She was delighted, and here is my spiderweb!

Despite the donkey in front of the American flag, this is not a political statement:

Another pretty fairy/angel/girl with wings:

Balloon boat:

This is a high quality ornament I made for my mom at an undisclosed age, certainly long after this kind of thing was "cute":

Yes, that was felt wrapped around a soda can.

I actually don't remember ever seeing this ornament before... but I imagine it's connected to some story about a ship, or something in a glass ball, or a ship in a glass ball that someone saw one time and bought a commemorative ornament of. Or maybe it's just decorative:

A pre-school expression of glitter, glue, and paper plate magic:

One of the many pixies around the Christmas tree. As a little kid, I was led to believe that they were magical and mischievous and would roam around the Christmas tree knocking things over and creating a general nuissance in Christmas tree land:

A very special ornament with all the names of the Spooners (the name we came up for Cathy & Mike's family and my family combined):

A squirrel in the tree (no, it's not Wooly):

Pretty:

A pegasus apparently sodomizing poor Santa with its horn:

This is my dad's bulldog ornament, it sort of reminds me of him:

The angel with her head jammed into the ceiling in an attempt to break free from the tree up her butt and float up into heaven! Just kidding, that would be ridiculous:

And finally, a very out-of-tune singing Santa (Apparently Brent has the very same one! I think we lived parallel childhoods):

Merry Christmas everyone! Feel free to share your own special Christmas anecdotes in the comments section!

Posted by lauren at December 10, 2006 11:39 PM

Comments

didn't you destroy that turkey knife?


i miss last year's tree adventure of me diving out from behind trees to throw snowballs at you and then commando-crawling on the ground so you wouldn't know where i had disappeared to and then throwing more snowballs at you. good times.

on a side note, why has there been no substantial amount of snow yet?


i love you. i feel like there was some other comment i was meaning to make, but i can't remember what it was. i'll figure it out and post it on some future entry, at which point it will be utterly irrelevant (which it probably was anyway).

Posted by: brent at December 11, 2006 12:56 AM

um... where was michaels ornament?!

christmas cookies was fun, and i definitely ate most of them on the way back to school (fattyyy).

miss you! see you soon

Posted by: your lovER at December 11, 2006 01:46 PM