A REAL Christmas Tree

In my marriage, there are only two topics that I find to be completely non-negotiable:
1) We will always have cats and dogs and he will love them as much as I do.
2) We will always have a live Christmas tree like the ones that I grew up with.

As (probably too many) people down here will tell you, I've had some trouble finding exactly what we had at home, and some say that I have a tendancy to be a tad obsessive when things don't quite work out like I'd envisioned. 

I don't think it's that bad. As long as you have the right tree, lights, and ornaments, we are set!


The Tree:

A real tree is non-negotiable. I'd rather not have a tree than forfeit the character and smell of a living tree.


White fir is the top choice. The longer and softer the needles, the better. Unfortunately, despite my absolute best efforts, you can't get those trees in Houston.

I can settle for a douglas fir. We've had these for the past two years. They're just meh.

Frasier fir is absolutely unacceptable. Apologies to those who do like them, but the branches are way too prickly and the needles are too short to hide the wires from the lights. (I've gotten into pretty big arguments with tree salesmen over these. I don't like them and you're not going to convince me to. If I come in knowing the actual names of the different varieties, I think I know what I want.)

The Lights:

The lights were something that my dad did, and anybody that knows my dad knows that he works on his own schedule. One of my favorite Christmas memories was every year when my dad would wake us up at 3 am on some random December morning and we would get up, go into the pitch black family room, and see the tree beautifully lit with thousands of lights.

I know that I'm still short of the number of lights that my dad had on the tree, but I have more than a dozen strands, some 1800 bulbs. (And that this picture was taken in the middle of the day...)

Wrapping the tree is tedious, but unwrapping it can be tortuous. Last year was my first "hard core" tree, and I really had trouble once it came time to remove the lights. I wrestled with the lights for a while, but with a dozen strands, one wrong move can cause a really big mess really fast. After 3 hours, I got frustrated and this is what happened:

It worked, and I got the stupid lights off of the stupid tree, but thank goodness my husband was at work for that particular episode of crazy.

This year, I got smart. (Yes, I know, there is a fine line between obsessive and smart.) I tagged the end of each strand of lights, drew a diagram as i put them on the tree.

It saved hours of frustration and the tree survived intact, albeit less 80% of the needles.

Ornaments:

Ornaments were my mom's thing. We had ornaments dating back 20+ years, and each ornament had its own story. I loved unpacking all of the ornaments with my mom, hearing the stories, and placing them on the tree.

I'm still working on our collection. My friends always comment on how the tree is all OU. My husband comments on how the tree is all dog & cat ornaments. So maybe I'm still working on the diversity, but Oklahoma and my pets are my two favorite things :-)

Regardless, I still love slowly unpacking all of my ornaments. (And I wish that I would have thought to take pictures of them!) We have a thistle from Scotland that I bought right after John asked me to marry him. An ornament for our first Christmas married (2008), and another for our first Christmas together (2009). A beautiful hand blown Oklahoma flag (my favorite) to represent where we came from, and a cowboy santa for our new home in Texas. Pickles and santas, snowflakes (as close as we'll get to a white Christmas here) and candy canes, and no less than a dozen OU and dog/cat ornaments.

Put them all together, and you have a beautiful, sentimental, eclectic, unique tree!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Watermelon is a Vegetable! No, seriously.

We leave this afternoon to go back to Oklahoma for the holidays. Even with our amazing home here in Texas, nothing beats the feeling of crossing the Red River back into Oklahoma. Daisy and I sing Oklahoma when we enter the state... At the top of our lungs when we're alone; we spare John and sing it in our heads when he is in the car.

That said, a few months ago, I was shocked to learn that most students in the Eastern and Western United States don't take a single class about their state history! I took Oklahoma history in 4th, 7th, and 11th grades. For being a relatively unpopulated state with little allure, we have a lot of pride and take our state history very seriously.

Everybody knows the basic state symbols:

Flower: Mistletoe

Wildflower: Indian Blanket

Tree: Redbud

Bird: Scissortail Fly Catcher

Rock: Rose Rock

Song: Oklahoma! from the musical Oklahoma

Fish: White Bass (ok, maybe most don't know that one; I wrote a report on it in 4th grade...)

But, did you know that, in 2005, a group of 5th graders from Skiatook successfully petitioned to add the strawberry as the state fruit? This is cool because: 1 - I love strawberries! 2 - How awesome is it that a group of fifth graders were able to lobby and push state legislation through?

And in 2007, in a slightly less endearing story, our state senate decided that we needed a state vegetable to go with our state fruit... The verdict? Watermelon! Yes, our state vegetable is watermelon. Wait, you thought it was a fruit? Me too. Google "Oklahoma State Vegetable" and you get a picture of an OSU graduate. Ok no not really that wasn't nice. I'm sorry; I take it back. Google "Oklahoma State Vegetable" and you get a lot of really negative headlines; it caused a lot of controversy. BUT, google "Is watermelon a vegetable," and the answer is yes. A lot of people technically consider it both a fruit and a vegetable - a fregitable! (No, I didn't make that word up!)

Watermelons are like tomatoes. They have seeds and are the "ripened ovary of a seed plant," but as a member of the cucurbitaceous plant family, watermelon is related to the cucumber and squash and planted and harvested as a vegetable. (Thank you http://ezinearticles.com/?Watermelon:-A-Fruit,-a-Vegetable-or-a-Fregetable?&id=387416)

That said, I still think its a stretch. Send this decision back to the 5th graders. They could have picked potatos or corn. Or if you really just want to bend the rules between fruit and vegetable, go with okra or tomato. Something a little less... fruity...

See y'all soon!

Linds

(Thanks to http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Oklahoma/StateSymbolsOklahoma.html for all of the pictures!)

Happy Birthday - Minute to Win It Style!

Anybody with a December birthday will tell you that growing up as a Christmas baby can really stink. My birthday is 6 days before Christmas, which conveniently lines up with the end of finals, the last minute Christmas panic, and everybody leaving for vacation, making a birthday celebration the last thing on everybody's list. (I do owe Seth and Kelton a shout-out for making Bday 22 pretty great though!)

That said, this year was awesome! (Turns out way more people hang around when you live here permanently and have to work the week before Christmas!) On Friday, I had a fantastic birthday party (with the biggest turnout since I was about 5 years old and Santa made an appearance), and then spent the rest of the weekend generally bumming around and taking advantage of my sweet husband's generosity and willingness to wait on me hand and foot.

So the birthday party... We went out to dinner, then came back to our house for dessert and a Minute to Win It party. If you haven't seen this show on NBC, you need to. They come up with challenges involving household items, and give you 60 seconds to accomplish them. On their website, they have the "blueprints" for everything so that you can try them at home. ( http://www.nbc.com/minute-to-win-it/ ) We selected a half dozen of the more indoor-friendly games for our party, and I have honestly never laughed so hard in my life...

We're American, so of course we had a scoreboard. (What's the point of playing if you can't win?) We noted how quickly a person finished the task and then awarded 3, 2, 1 points to 1st, 2nd, 3rd place, respectively. Prizes are in the REI bag on the windowsill :-)

We hooked the computer up to the TV and showed the actual Minute to Win It blueprints before each game. We did have to tweak most of the games; we ran them in heats so people were more comfortable doing ridiculously embarassing things.

We started simple, so first was Defying Gravity. Keep your balloons in the air for the entire 60 seconds. We did heats of 5 people with 2 balloons each and gave 1 point if you succeeded.

Next, Face the Cookie. Put an Oreo cookie on your forehead, and using only your facial muscles, maneuver it to your mouth as quickly as you can.

Third, Penny Hose. Place a penny in each foot of a pair of panty hose. Using only your hands, work your way down to both pennies. (This is a lot harder than it sounds!)

Fourth, Bobblehead. Put a pedometer on your forehead. Register as many steps as you can in 60 seconds by shaking your head. (As Tim will tell you, it takes minimal movement to actually get it to click :-)

 Fifth, Bite Me. Line up 5 lunch bags cut to heights of 10", 8", 6", 4", 2". Bend down and pick them up with your mouth, allowing nothing but your feet to touch the ground. (Felicity dominated everybody on this one! She grabbed all of the bags in just 17 seconds!! We didn't even have time to get a picture of her!)

Finally, Junk in the Trunk. Put 8 ping pong balls in an empty Kleenex box and tie it around your waist. Wiggle however you see fit to get them alllll out! NO HANDS!

Congrats to Wheeler for winning it all, and thanks to everybody for coming out and being such great sports! I had a fantastic time!

The party was super easy to plan and I would recommend it to anybody! We're already planning an outside party in the spring, so that we can do the more mobile and messy games! (My Berkine loves are lucky this show didn't exist while I was over there. We absolutely would have been playing these games at every single barbeque.) Enjoy! And tell me how it goes if you set up your own!

Linds

I'm obsessed!

As many of my good friends know, I recently became completely obsessed with The Pioneer Woman blog by Ree Drummund (of none other than Pawhuska, Oklahoma).

http://thepioneerwoman.com/

As a result of my obsession, I have worked to convince my husband that we can go home and make amazing money with a ranch and a blog in Oklahoma, tried to cook a half dozen desserts for my birthday (all of which were just okay), convinced myself that I need a fancy camera to take amazing pictures of everything around me, and that I need a blog to talk about all of it because the entire world cares about what I am doing!

So... I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that we are not ranchers (although we will eventually move back to Oklahoma and drive a big truck), I'll never beat Bobby Flay in a throwdown, and the fancy camera can wait a bit. The whole world probably doesn't care what I have to say, but I know some people do, so I'm sticking with the blog. Enjoy!