'tis the season

I'm comfy cozy, wrapped in a blanket and drinking Earl Grey from a mug with Degas' ballerinas painted on it. We got our Christmas tree last night, and I am basking in the twinkly glow and inhaling the fresh pine scent.

Trimming the tree has always been one of my favorite activities. It has become even more fun now that I get a real tree. As a kid growing up, my parents always had a fake tree. Which is like Christmas blasphemy to my traditionalist husband who is used to the real trees in Ohio that you cut down yourself.

We walked up and down the Christmas tree lot, debating the pros and cons of each tree. I wanted one with a perfect shape - must be all those years of having a fake tree; while Aaron wanted it to be bushy and full. We ended up getting a lovely, tall Douglas fir.

We hauled it upstairs, and I felt like Santa's little elf. We cranked up the Christmas music; Mariah Carey, Amy Grant, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. I danced around, lip synching the girl parts to "Baby, It's Cold Outside." We struggled endlessly with getting the tree to stand straight. We strung the lights, only to discover that we should have bought more. We festooned the tree with ribbon, a concept I introduced to Aaron after I rejected the idea of tinsel. We reminisced as we hung the special ornaments; the hula-dancing starfish that we picked up in the Lahaina shops in Maui, the "Our First Christmas" snowmen that I had personalized last year and then promptly forgot to pick up until a few days before Christmas, the Raggedy Anne & Andy ornaments that I took from Mom's house because they remind me of childhood Christmases. He put the star on top of the tree, and we laughed when we discovered that it fit perfectly, missing the ceiling by about one centimeter.

And then, we closed our eyes and turned on the lights.



Click the picture for more tree-trimming fun. :)