Christmas Time is Here

Last night I help Stephen decorate his family's Christmas tree. We went out to buy our tree on one of the windiest nights of the year. As we walked out of the door, Stephen's mom reminded us that we were not to go crazy and keep the size of the room in mind. We hollered back, "we know" and got in the car. After investigating every tree in the lot, with Stephen testing branches for optimal sturdiness, we set our eyes the perfect image of Christmas foliage. A beautiful 7.5 foot tree. After paying, the "tree man" gets ready to load our tree up and kindly asks which vehicle is ours, to which I reply "see that Honda Civic over there." He gives a jolly little laugh and hoists this tree onto the top of my car which overflows over both the hood and trunk of my car. Off to the house we head.

We arrive at the house and remove the tree from the hood. As we stand it up, we are suddenly very aware of the size of this tree. We then try to remember if this tree was this big when we bought it or if it grew some 3 feet from the time we left the lot. We finally get it set up and it looks perfect; a little big, but beautiful none-the-less. We decorate it with nostalgic ornaments, some older than my brother, all while drinking a hardy dose of apple cider. I then decide no tree is to be without the traditional construction paper paper chain. I then assemble some 300+ tiny bits of paper rolled and stapled to each other. I might mention that I became tired of this process about 20 chain links in.

Now all that is missing is the presents!