O Christmas Tree 2008

Today we finally got around to buying our Christmas tree. This is a good week later than we normally buy it, but time seems to be getting away from us this holiday season. We get our tree from the local nursery. They usually have a good selection. They had a fire going today as we pulled up. We normally buy a Douglas fir, but couldn't find one we liked. Actually we did find one that we like until we looked at the trunk and saw that it curved like a banana. We selected a Frazier fur instead.

When you buy a tree from them, they give you a pointsetta.

We ended up picking these two. Now if we can remember to water them, they might actually last until Christmas.


Another perk if you shop for a tree at the nursery on the weekend - they feed you! They had various cheeses and fruits, a tasty crab dip, spicy wings and meatballs in a bbq sauce. You can wash it down with coffee or hot cocoa.


They trimmed our tree for us, packed it up and tied it to the top of our minivan and we were ready to roll for home.

I had all kinds of offers to help decorate the tree. The Son shows how he helped out. Actually he left to go home and do laundry.

Taking a cue from The Son, Ann helped decorate the tree from across the room.

So I was pretty much on my own for getting the tree decorated. I put on some Christmas music to set the mood and I got to it starting with the lights. At first I thought this string was totally nonfunctioning as it would not light at all. That's until Ann walked over and threw the switch that controlled the outlet I was using. Ooops.

The lights took longer than I would have liked as I found three bulbs that were out. I cannibalized some replacements from other defunct strings of lights I keep for that purpose, but they barely glowed at all. I think I need to get new lights for next year before these totally go. Ok, a shot with the lights finally up.

After the lights, I began adding our ornaments. It's a mixture of bulbs and objects like a boat, a Santa playing bagpipes and some decorations left over from when the kids were in school. After about an hour I was all done. Here is the finished tree. Merry Christmas!