It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  Today we went and and chopped down our Christmas tree.   Ok, so we went to the big red and white tented tree city that pops up every year down the road.  Our tree is a BIG FAT 7 footer that is now filling the space we gave it to live in for the holiday season.  Some how we ended up with a deal on it.  I think they marked the price wrong.  Most of the 7 foot fat ones were at least 10 bucks more than this one.  EJ, Dear Hubby and I went round and round in circles under the big tent until EJ was ready to revolt.  You would think she would be excited about her first Christmas tree.  She’s 6 months now.  She should be able to have a vote on how big and fat the tree should be.  She’s the one who’s going to be crawling under it by the 25th.  But Nooooo, all she did was whine.  I know, we’re terrible parents finding her whimpers adorable.  We did manage to get a couple photos of her before she lost her grip.  She was wearing the cutest little santa hat.  I think she likes her hat but she didn’t like going that long with out a solid meal.  Juice in a sippy cup is not a meal. Ask her, she’ll tell you. 

As I went to the front of the tent to hunt down one of the college students that sells the trees, usually found out back in the employee area playing with the chain saws, to tell them that we found our perfect family tree, I discovered our perfect BIG FAT family tree.  Even better!  This one was sitting right next to the check out stand.  I have no clue why it was marked the way it was.  I didn’t want to ask.  I did ask the kid why the ticket was duck taped together and he said it was because some other family thought it was their perfect family tree and changed their minds.  Um, ok, I’ll take it!  Then I had to go back and get Dear Hubby who was where I left him stalking our perfect family tree to make sure no one else fell in love with it.   He rolled his eyes at me and asked me if I was sure this was the one…again.  Apparently I’d had already picked out a few too many perfect family trees.  But I assured him it was…THE ONE!  All Dear Hubby had to say was “Thank God”. 

Guess what happened!!  When we went to run our credit card their phone line went dead!   Just our luck.  We find the most perfect BIG FAT family tree and we can’t buy it.  I was ready to pee on it to make it mine while the sales kid was scratching the lice in his dread locks trying to figure out what to do next.  Finally he said just take it home and I’ll call you later and run your card.  WOW!  Can you believe it?  I was just shocked!  People just don’t do that any more.  I’m talking trust here.  How often can you hand over something to anyone, it doesn’t matter if it cost $1 or $100, and trust that they will pay later with out getting back ground info, personal identification info and collateral.  As I would say my next born child, or as Dear Hubby would say his left nut.  But this kid did.  He didn’t strike me as the unintelligent type.  College student.  Probably hasn’t seen a whole lot of negative in life yet but not stupid about it either.  I know my husband and I don’t exactly scream criminal standing there in our polo shirts and christmas hats but you never know…  We could be that perfect BIG FAT Christmas tree thieves that he didn’t get the memo about.   But he trusted us and we got to take our cranky daughter and our perfect BIG FAT tree home.  

It was several hours later that the tree kid called us about paying.  Dear Hubby didn’t see that he called for another hour.  When he told me that I pictured the poor kid sitting there crapping his pants thinking that he messed up good this time.  Can you imagine how relived he was when Dear Hubby called him back?   Merry Christmas kid.  You can still keep your faith in humanity.

We now have our perfect BIG FAT tree set up, still naked, in our living room.  It smells soooo good!  I wish I could describe the smell with something other than Pine-sol.  For me it just smells like Christmas.   

Smiles!

Sorry the picture is so red. This is what happens when your under a big red and white tent. You turn into a tomato.

This is our BIG FAT tree.

Our next step was to get her on Santa’s lap without her tripping out over the big, furry, fat man in more crushed velvet.  As we took her up to Santa he instructed me not to turn her towards him and just place her in his lap with out her getting a good look at him.  It worked!  She snuggled up in his big arm like she belonged there. She even looked up at him a couple times and graced him with a smile.  Christmas miracle number two.  

After we took the pictures he told me why he instructed me put her in his lap backwards and it was so smart.  This is my first experience with the mall Santa thing so I was pretty amazed at this one.  I think I was expecting to have Santa be like some of the characters you see in the movies where the Santa is some creepy drunk guy secretly “coveting” the elves during his breaks.  This Santa was so nice and friendly he had me posing the thought as I looked at him “WOW, if Santa was real this is him”  Maybe this is  like the movies where the mall Santa, that everyone takes for granted, is really the true, flying through the air in a gold rocket led by magical flying reindeer going ho ho ho all the way real SANTA!  His beard was real people!!  And he had the kindest eyes and the nicest voice.  Gave me a good dose of Christmas spirit which I needed this year.  Christmas miracle number three.  

Dear Hubby and I decided before we got there that we wanted pose in the pictures with Santa and EJ.  Hubby kinda stood/squatted next to him on the side that EJ was on and I sat on Santa’s other knee.  Since I didn’t want to squish him, not realizing that he really was big enough to fill out that Santa suit and that I wasn’t going to mush him at all, I kinda sat leaning over towards EJ in some weird hunch.  While I’m very proud of myself and I feel like I’m winning the war against the baby weight I gained, tonight however, the weight won the battle.  As I hunched over all the “extra” hunched over too creating this odd spare tire look that didn’t agree with my shirt.  I did the sit and pose test when I got dressed to make sure all my clothing worked with my body for the picture.  I did all I could but I didn’t assess my outfit for hunching.  When I stand I don’t have this problem, and when I sit normally I don’t either.  All you moms out there know what I’m talking about.  It may look great standing still but the minute you move you break the seal and it all comes loose.  Anyways, after looking at the pictures we took with Santa and EJ I mentioned to Hubby that I looked horrible in the pictures.  He agreed with me.  Normally this would be a profound reason to hit the hormonal ceiling but in this case it was nice that he agreed with me.  That’s when we decided to have EJ take a picture with Santa on her own.  This time she got a good look at him before she was placed on his lap and she did start to freak out a little but then she just suddenly stopped.   She graced us all with BIG grins and great pictures to choose from.  Thinking we would have to pay for another sitting fee we were discussing it with the “picture lady” and she offered to just put the picture on a CD for $10 more instead of charging us again.  This was very nice of her because she didn’t have to do that.  Christmas miracle number four and five.

This first Santa experience has been a wonderful one and I really wanted to share it with all of you.  I tell you what, it’s hard to believe that this man wasn’t Santa.  I think I’m starting to believe again.   Now I guess I need to start thinking about what to ask Santa for.  What would you ask him for if you could?