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.
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!
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