Not so Joyous

On Monday A had a job interview in Portland so I thought I would surprise the boys and take them to get a Christmas tree since daddy would be gone all day and they were sad about that. Well, it was not quite the merry and joyous occassion I had thought it would be. First, trying to get a tree at a farm, on a Monday is not a good idea. All but one were closed until Thurs. Thankfully the one that was open was fairly close and they charged a max of $25 for a tree AND all they had were noble firs which is exactly what I wanted.

I told the boys to get dressed before they could find out the surprise so they would be already to go. When I told them I had two excited boys, but R burst into tears crying and whining that he didn't want to go do that. He only wanted to play with his army men at home. I got so mad at him that I told him he would sit in the car the whole time we were getting the tree. Therefore, I only have a picture with two of them in front of our tree before we cut it down.

We got to the tree farm and it didn't look too promising. There was a rundown little shack for someone's house and it didn't look like there were a whole lot of trees in their lot. After several knocks on the door (I could hear the tv blaring inside) a little old blind man answered. I asked him if he was selling trees and he said his wife did it, but I could take the saw laying on the porch and go get one myself. We had nowhere else to go find one so I decided to take him up on it. We left R crying in the car and I took T and C to find a tree in the muddy lot. We quickly realized they were all huge so rather than looking for a pretty one we just started looking for a "small" one. We finally settled on one and I started sawing. Thirty minutes later we had the tree down. Now we had to figure out how to get it to the car. I went to get R and told him he had to come help carry it back. It took another 30 minutes and much whining to get it back to the man's yard. Thank goodness at that point someone else showed up and offered to help carry it the rest of the way and load it up. We shoved all 9 feet of it in as far as we could and I went to pay. Since the rear door was open we drove all the way home at about 20 miles an hour (another 45 minutes). When we got home I yanked it out of the car and let it lay in our walkway until A could deal with it.

The boys did have a great time decorating it last night (once the lights were on, they were a bit impatient about that). Then, we all slept in the living room "under" the tree. I didn't get much sleep, but it was fun looking at the pretty lights while lying on the floor.