The Christmas Tree Stand

For the past two weeks a Christmas tree stand has been holding my husband hostage, but it's only temporary and by next week we'll all be together again and happily on our way to Florida for Christmas vacation. The lawn care company Paul works with sets up a Christmas Tree stand every year for three weeks at the end of November through the middle of December. They had over 700 hand-picked (beautiful) trees delivered from a tree farm in Michigan a couple weeks ago and now have only 7 left. SEVEN! And seven more trees means almost no more stand for this year. It's been quite an adventure having daddy gone so much during this Christmasy season. We'd normally be watching movies together, making chocolate-covered pretzels, wrapping presents, or sitting by the fire dreaming about our children's faces come Christmas morning. I've been in survival mode for the most part (hence the reason I haven't been blogging) and am looking forward to Monday (the day we leave for FL) and the dreaming can begin.

So yeah, it's almost midnight at present and I'm exhausted - absolutely - but the house is clean and the laundry is put away and there is so much to look forward to in the coming weeks! Speaking of, Izaac has shown great interest in the presents under the tree and I can hardly wait to see what he'll do when he actually gets to open some. His favorite though are the candy canes on the tree. The boys and I have laughed at his adorableness, he plucks a candy can off the tree, breaks it open then sucks on it with a satisfied grin. Elijah and Joel have done their fair share of sneaking candy canes too and, to tell the truth, so have I. We're over candy canes now. Totally. I think we've bought 5 boxes of candy canes so far and you'd never know it by looking at our tree. If I eat any more I might never want another one as long as I live.

I forgot to mention that, thanks to Kevin Pollock (owner of the tree stand) we were able to purchase a big, beautiful frasier fir and stand for $25 this year. A real tree! A dream come true for me. Now I don't have to burn a wanna-be fir-scented candle from Wal-mart because I have the real thing in my living room and it smells beyond good.

The night we put the tree up, after the kids were in bed, I looked everywhere for the lights we'd used on our fake tree the past 6 years so that in the morning we could all decorate the tree together, until Paul remembered they were attached to the fake tree. But the next morning we woke to find the boys had already adorned the Christmas tree with every ornament we own (plus candy canes and a few foreign objects). We didn't have the heart to tell their proud little faces that the lights are supposed to go on first. All we could do was smile knowingly to each other and say to the boys, "Wow, what a amazing job you guys did!" Two days later we took all the ornaments off to put the lights on and the boys cheerfully helped.

It's been so fun these past couple of weeks, even with Paul gone. We've missed him a ton. Thankfully we'll have our normal schedule back soon, since no one buys Christmas Trees after Christmas.