brookaloo:

this is our first real christmas tree. in the 11 years that shawn and i have been married, we have never had a real christmas tree. we had the $2 goodwill tree our first year, it was about 2 feet tall, and stood on a milk crate. then there was the awesome rotating aluminum tree with changing lights. that hasn't come out since the cats arrived. the past few years we've had another goodwill tree, this one 4 ft tall, but so cute. i love that tree, but i really really wanted a real one this year. our neighbors introduced us to a cut your own tree farm out by chelsea, so a few weeks ago we decided to give it a go. i was feeling really really crabby, as well as shawn, and i'm pretty sure the girls were too, so it wasn't a christmas card moment. at one point shawn and i were both yelling at each other about directions, and i proceeded to say that i would not talk to him anymore because he had ruined our perfect "christmas memory" of buying our first real tree. which then became pretty funny because that's really a more fitting christmas memory, so it all smoothed out by the time we got there.

to add insult to injury, as we were looking around for a tree, there was a family, complete with grandparents, holding hands circling a tree singing "oh christmas tree" before they chopped it down. as we walked by with our wagon and saw, i gave shawn one of my "oh brother" looks, which meant "we suck" since there would be no singing around our tree. it was a sweet moment, but a tradition that i cannot see our family adopting. instead, we finally found a sweet spruce, named him bruce, and cheered as shawn cut it down.

yea!!!!

i can't tell you how sweet it felt to be driving home with a christmas tree on our roof. we were one of a hundred cars on the road with cute little trees tied to their roofs. at last we had our christmas memory.