Commence with the Decorating!

Look at the post I made prior to this one. I'll give you a second to scroll down...

>whistling while waiting<

Are you back? It was a Christmas tree, right? Good.

So last night Jen and I got a Christmas tree.

The original plan was to buy a tree on Friday, set it up in the designated tree place, let it spread out on Saturday, and then decorate it on Sunday. That was before we checked the calendar and realized we were busy Sunday. So we re-planned and decided to buy the tree Wednesday, the decorate it on Friday. Right about that time we saw a weather forecast calling for Wednesday evening rain. (The current forecast has pushed that off to late night. Oh well)

Then Jen and I got to talking (over Google Wave) about maybe getting an artificial tree. The tree we had last year made a god awful mess. Jen and I both grew up in fake tree families. She had a fake tree the Christmas before meeting me. It would cost us more this year but probably save us money in the future. After much back and forth we decided that getting an artificial tree would be the way to go for us at this time.

It was a bit of foresight on our part that might just make you folks think we're psychic or some crap.

We were at Target (tar-jhay) last night looking at trees when Jen's fantastic iPhone rang. It was a certain eight year old girl who was staying at her father's house that night. She had been invited to a sleep over on Friday and was asking her mom if she could go. We looked into the calendar and agreed that yes, she could go. Which meant our decision to pick up a tree on Tuesday was no longer a spur of the moment thing. It had become a necessity! (like how I am trying to make buying a fake Christmas tree more dramatic than it really is? You're welcome)

So now the plan is officially, buy tree Tuesday, decorate Wednesday, go to music lesson Thursday, go to sleep over Friday, baby sit baby Saturday, visit graves and have dinner with lots of family Sunday. >whew!<

Now for the ridiculously amazing part...

When I was a kid and we had a fake tree it was a huge, laborious process to put it together. There was a pole with holes in it. You put the pole into a tree stand. Then you put the color coordinated branches into the appropriate holes on the pole. There was a truck load of color coded branches and it took a very long time to get them into place.

Not any more. Our tree has a stand and three tree sections. You put the bottom section into the stand and unfold the branches, then put the middle section into the bottom section and unfold, then put the top into the middle and again unfold. We were done with the whole thing, including adjusting the branches to fill in an gaps, in just about 10 minutes. It was glorious.

So now we are fully prepared to take care of all of our Christmas decorating tonight. It's going to be fun. To make it even better, I had some accumulated time off from work that I had to get rid of so I am leaving early this afternoon. I call that a double bonus!

WOOHOO!