And still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary world

Irony: I had all kinds of time last night, but nothing to write about.  (Believe me, I tried.)  Tonight I have all kinds of things to write about, but no time.  Life is hilarious.

We got our Christmas tree today.  Fun fact: We always get our tree the second weekend in December.  And at Eric's poker party last weekend, his friend Les mentioned that he was going to have to go in and thin out his neighbor's U-Cut tree lot.  Les runs this lot by default, apparently.  Anyway, Eric thought he'd do his part and get our tree there this year.

Another fun fact: We are traditionally a Charlie Brown tree kind of family.  How Charlie Brown?  Usually we get something from my in-laws' property that is actually just a poor spindly top interfering with their view.  How spindly?  The branches are never strong enough to support the weight of our ornaments.

So imagine my surprise when Eric comes home with this:

We're not used to anything quite this bushy.
That wonky branch?  "Character." 

I mean, he was going to some overgrown tree lot.  My expectations weren't exactly high, and I have 16 years of married history to back me up on that.  I wasn't expecting something so... pretty.  (The pictures aren't doing it justice.  The branches are just cool looking... and feel almost plastic.  I think Eric said this is a Silver Noble.  But I wasn't really listening, so I could be totally wrong.)

Abby was like, uh, that's an actual tree.  I don't think we've ever had a tree this nice in the house before.  Which I realize is sad, but anyway, that's just how we roll.  Except for this year, I guess.

P.S. It cost Eric $10 to chop it down.  That's $10 more than we usually spend... which probably explains why our trees never held up our ornaments before.

So Eric gets the base on... and then goes down into his shop to figure out how to rig up some sort of faux stand for the thing... and then we get the tree skirt around the bottom... and then he puts on the lights.  Johanna was all about putting the angel on top this year, for some reason.  She got a little help from Eric.

She wore these PJs especially for this moment.

There was a lot of jumping around the living room after she'd accomplished her dream, just FYI.

I have a collection of frame ornaments with the girls' pictures inside.  One frame per girl per year.  I hung these up myself, since they're my favorites (wow, I guess I forgot a couple of years... what was going on in 2007?  I need to get caught up), and then let the girls go to town with the rest.  We have a box of "good ornaments" that we use every year.  We usually don't get to put them all up, what with picking trees that are structurally deficient, but this year, we got everything on.  The girls tended to cluster the ornaments together, and it looks just dorky as all get out, but will it will stay that way, of course, because.

Abby gets 'er done.

P.P.S. I don't have a very good picture of the finished product yet.  I could just go step out into the living room and take one, but why?

Then the girls turn their attention to my small Hallmark Christmas tree with its teeny tiny little ornaments.  It looks a wreck, honestly.  I used to take great pride in putting up that tree, and got new ornaments every year.

A Johanna-eye view.

But, just like with the tree... it is what it is.  Dude, I'm totally zen in my old age.  The girls are happy, more than likely Abby and Jo will decide to rearrange ornaments more than once (that's just what they do), and in the grand scheme of things, does it matter that it's not perfect?

No.  Because it IS perfect.

Now that I've said this and come across as such a good mother, I will tell you by the time 2 p.m. rolled around, I had HAD it with the togetherness.  Johanna, the sunny happy little thing, WOULD NOT quit saying my name.  MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM!  And I'd be like, jeez, what?  And she'd be all, blah blah blah I couldn't really even hear what she was talking about, let alone understand it, so I just smiled and nodded a lot and apparently agreed to some stuff that I had no idea I'd actually agreed to.

D'oh!

So I was like, um, I think I need to go to the store now!  And Abby was like, where are you going?  And I was like, OUT.  She wanted to come, too.  And since she was not yelling my name 45 times a minute, I let her.

First we went to a Mary Kay open house.  Eric's cousin's wife is a consultant, which comes in quite handy.  Anyway, she didn't have what I was looking for (no biggie, that's why God gave us mail), but I did get some samples (and then was thinking, shoot, talk about excess packaging...) and ordered a new lip gloss.  They've discontinued my foundation, apparently, so tomorrow I'll try my samples and hopefully have a new shade ordered by the end of the day.

Then we hit the grocery store.  It's a Saturday, it's December, it's crazy.  But you know what?  It was actually sort of blissfully relaxing.  No one was asking me to do anything.  It was practically a vacation.

So by the time we got home again, I was feeling pretty good.  Breaks?  Are a godsend.  I keep telling myself that someday the house is going to be way too quiet, and then where will I be?  Unfortunately, that doesn't help me NOW.

Like I said, life is hilarious.

Sixpence None the Richer, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."  I'm just in the mood for this song today, even though another song about a Christmas tree would make more thematic sense.  (What?  I do think about those things.)  I like this chick's voice.  And I like this song.  And I like her singing this song.  "O ye beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow.  Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing. Oh rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing."