O Christmas Tree

DREAM CHRISTMAS TREE DAY

Daren and I wake to a crisp clear day. We talk animatedly about our up coming adventure over a morning up of coffee before we load up the dogs in the truck and head out in search of this years perfect tree. After a nice 45 minute drive with Christmas music playing in the background we find the ideal trail and head out into the woods to cut down our own tree.

With the dogs running and leaping in the snow, Daren and I tromp hand in hand with big smiles on our faces in direction of our tree.

We find it! Daren cuts it down in a few swift easy motions and we pull our new found piece of Christmas perfection and load it into our truck.

Arriving home, we stand the tree up in our house in the corner that seems to be made for a Christmas tree. As we decorate the tree together between sips of Eggnog and Rum we laugh and share stories of our favorite Christmas' past. Between choruses of Joy to The World and Here Comes Santa Claus we sneak kisses and endearing looks each knowing in our hearts that we will remember this moment forever....

ACTUAL CHRISTMAS TREE DAY

Daren and I wake up to his pager going off and a rain storm outside. Instead of the lively conversation over a cup of coffee the words "Let's get moving this morning, I've got to get to the hospital and get all of the Christmas shopping done today" are what ring throughout our house.

Daren hurries out the door to get the his patients at the hospital while I stay at home and try to move nearly every piece of furniture we have trying to find just one square foot of space to put our tree.

By the time Daren gets home it is a freezing down pour outside and I've made my choice on the tree placement to which I heard "Thats weird." I responded with a chipper "I can't find another place in here...and its freezing and wet out there so let's just go to a lot"

We drove up the road about 10 minutes while Daren returned messages and I sang Christmas songs to myself. Once at the lot we saw this.....nothing says Merry Christmas quite like a flock of plastic pink flamingos.

We found in our tree in 3 minutes flat.

We found our wreath in about 8 minutes.

We came home and made our eggnog and rum. And let's just say it didn't sit well on any ones stomach....

Daren began to put the lights on the tree and slowly but surely I overtook him with what Daren very diplomatically called my "process" for decorating a tree. He then had to head out to shop since this was his only free weekend and I decorated the tree alone while watching a sappy love story on TV.

There was a brief interlude of romance in the day. This is Daren dancing to the Christmas music with Burl by the tree.

Ladies and Gentleman and I now present you with.....with....For the first time in 6 years my tree doesn't have a solid name. I think her name is Daphne, but Daren claims he peaked under its branches and its a boy named Jimbo. Regardless, here is our Christmas Tree from our unexpected albeit perfect Christmas Tree Day. We will remember this random day filled with unexpected events and lots of laughs for the rest of our lives. It was perfect.

Merry Christmas.