It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It's only December 10th but I think I'm actually ahead of the game for once. I did 90% of my Christmas shopping on line at work on Thursday evening at about 6 p.m. I figure by then it's OK to be doing my personal business. OK, yes, I have also done shopping during the real work day. I was trying to sound virtuous.

I have printed out labels for my Christmas cards and have written The Christmas Letter. Now I just have to send the cards. Amazing, it's over 2 weeks before Christmas. I used to hand write all the envelopes and the notes inside the cards. But I had to write basically the same thing on any card that I was sending to any person I hadn't talked to all year. So I decided last year to give in to the wonders of automation and word processors and write a Christmas Letter. Holiday Letter, I suppose I should say to be politically correct. And since my handwriting is so godawful I really didn't see that it was such a bad thing to type up a mailing list and use printed labels either. Better people should get the cards and get them on time than not get them at all due to my horrible handwriting, or my procrastination.

And then today a whole bunch of us went to cut down our own Christmas trees. Our friend Sally (we'll call her) down the street has two adorable kids who are now 11 (daughter) and 14 (son), and our other friend we'll call Angela, has two equally adorable children, a daugher of 11 and son of 18. 18-year-old son is way too cool to go chop down a Christmas tree with his mom and her oh-so-not-cool friends (actually he's a great kid and puts up with us very good-naturedly on many occasions but must have had better things to do today). Anyway, Sally, Angela, and we decided to all go en masse and cut down Christmas trees in Lafayette, New Jersey. So we went in two vans and arrived at about 1 p.m. on a beautiful 55 degree day in December. Amazing weather for this time of year - global warming is fine with me.

DH and I found a perfect little tree, a blue Spruce (very prickly but so pretty) and decided on that one relatively quickly, got it all tied up and done with in about half an hour. Naturally the rest of the group took longer since children were involved. But eventually all three trees were chosen, chopped, and tied to the roofs of the vans, and we took off for the burger place next door for lunch, along with all the other people who had just gotten their Christmas trees. Every single vehicle parked at this place had a tree tied on top.

After we got home we had to take our other friend to the train station and on our way back we got a frantic call from Sally who said she was having a Christmas tree crisis. We were about to go past her house when she reached us on the cell phone so we veered left and pulled into her driveway. Like the Ghost Busters, we were on call to save the day. Who ya gonna call? Tree Busters?

We arrived in her living room to find her desperately holding up a leaning Christmas tree. "It's crooked! I bought a crooked tree! It's no good!" she declared. DH took a closer look at the base and realized there was a branch in the way which was making the tree lopsided. After he chopped that off with the saw, the tree settled properly in the stand and all was well. Our friend then offered us beverages, which we gladly accepted, and we ended up staying and helping her and her daughter decorate the entire tree, while The Nutcracker Suite played sweetly in the background, an idyllic evening!

Of course when we got home it was too late to put up our own tree so it's still sitting in a bucket of water on the back porch. But at least we HAVE it. And it's only December 10th! Maybe this will be the first non-stressful Christmas ever! (I shouldn't say things like that, it will only jinx me...)