December is here, and we are taking it a day at a time, trying to get into the spirit of things.  It all began with the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and our attempt to get a live Christmas tree.  You see, I grew up having a real tree every year, but since we got married, it was never an option to have one in any of the places we lived.  Since Kevin knows just how much I love them, he said we could go out and get one this year.

I know that maybe I should have looked around more and found the best deal, but there is this Christmas tree lot on a main road in town that has their sign up all year round.  Every time I passed that sign since we moved here, I have thought about how excited I am to get a tree this year, and so when we went to buy one, we went straight there.  I am glad I did – their trees were beautiful, well taken care of, and reasonably priced.  Plus, I felt better giving my money to a family business than Home Depot or Walmart :).

It literally only took me a minute to find my tree, it was beautiful, the right hight, symmetrical and the right type of pine tree.  The kids loved watching them put the netting on, and then our van smelled so amazing on the way home.

Once we got home, Kevin took a break from putting on our outdoor lights to help get the tree up so Lily and I could decorate it.  What we thought would be pretty simple, was not.  It had been a really long time since I had helped my dad put up a tree, and I remembered him using a bucket full of rocks to stabilize it, and so I thought, "We have a bucket, I don't need to buy a tree stand."  Big mistake.

Unfortunately, even though our tree looks very straight, the trunk itself is lopsided, which makes it lean to the side.  This little detail, and both of our lack of experience, led to two hours of trying to get the tree to stand up straight – this even included a trip to Walmart to buy wire to fasten it to the ceiling and wall.

We did eventually get it to stand up straight, and then in the two minutes we both left the room, it proceeded to fall over.  By this time we knew that my bucket idea was NOT going to work, and so Kevin went to the store and bought us a stand.  (A really nice one that you can even water your tree with, which was one of my main purposes of using a bucket in the first place.  How was I to know that since I was child, they had created such nice tree stands??)  Fifteen minutes later, the tree was standing up perfectly.  We live, we learn.

By this time, both Kevin and I were completely exhausted, but knew that we had to finish what we started.  So he headed outside to finish the lights – which turned out perfect, as usual – while Lily and I decorated the tree inside.  Thank goodness for Lily's enthusiasm, since mine had disappeared somewhere during the earlier tree escapade.  We had a great time, and everything turned out beautiful.

Here are Kevin's lights (To capture it correctly, the house doesn't show up, but know that they aren't just floating there – Kevin is magic, but not that magic.):

And here is the infamous tree (Pictures don't do it justice.):

 And just for fun, here are pictures of some more of our decorations:

 And a few odds and ends:

And my kitchen:

 And my new favorite thing, my wreath:

 Luckily the rest of our decorating was pretty uneventful, and now we are free to just enjoy the Christmas season :).