Deck the Halls

Christmas is a big deal in our house.  My husband loves Christmas best of all.  It’s really quite awesome how excited he gets about Christmas!  For the last 7 years I’ve had a pre-lit fakie tree that he’s hated since I dragged it with me when we got married.  He thinks there is no other tree but a real one, no matter who pretty the falsie or how easy it is to put it together.

I like the fakie because I am completely and totally anal retentive about how the lights are put on the tree and it’s just easier with the imposter.  It takes me hours to put lights on a tree – and woe be to he (it’s always a boy!) who thinks he can do it better himself!  There is a method to putting lights on a tree and it will make my head spin around a full 360 degrees whilst pea soup spews out of my mouth and my eyes roll back in my head if it’s no done exactly right.  It’s just my thing.  I can’t help it!

This year we have Princess Bitesalot in the house and having a tree at teeth-gnashing level just wasn’t in the cards.  I can only say “Sasha NO!” so many times in one day before even I can’t stand the sound of my own voice.  So we had the brilliant idea that we would get a live tree that we can plant in the yard after Christmas.  Very green, no?  (one might even say…evergreen! bwahaha!) We hunted down the perfect one at the nursery, made even more perfect by the fact that it was 40% off, and hubby went in to pay for it.  AFTER we paid for the tree that still wasn’t cheap at 40% off the nursery guy says “Yanno, you can’t have this tree in the house for more than 7 days.  It will come out of dormancy and die when you take it back outside.”

Crickets.

No, we didn’t know that.

You should have seen the poo face.  Omigod the dejection!  Hub thinks the house should be decorated on the day after Thanksgiving and should remain all festive and sparkly until New Years Day, and we were already BEHIND!  There are rules!  A seven day window just wasn’t going to cut it!  He stuck it out for a few days before he started making noises about another tree.  Maybe we could leave the live one outside where it belongs and get a cut tree for the house, one that is small enough to elevate beyond jumping puppy level.

So we went tree hunting again.  We went to the lot by the highway that’s there every year with the guy who’s family tree makes a reef (I shit you not, he had a sign advertising “reefs $15″).  He helped us pick out a beautymous specimen, cut the bottom off for us, and threw it in the back of the truck.

We took it home and spent an hour and a half getting it straight in the stand.  I spent another hour and a half putting lights on it, then going to the store to get three more strings of lights, and another half-hour finishing with the light job. Then it was time to go into the attic because, yanno, we couldn’t have done that before getting started.  We finally got everything down and after two days of decorating the halls are officially decked.  Whew!

I now have more trees than I know what to do with.

But it’s worth it to see the hub all happy, dancing around the house while he makes up dirty words for the Christmas carols.  Christmas has arrived in the valley!