Christmas is coming

We've been a bit behind with some of our Christmas stuff this year. This is the first time EVER that our tree was not up on Thanksgiving weekend. I'm actually hugely relieved about that. I love Christmas, I love (and sooo much appreciate) that Robert does all the decorating, but having a tree up from Thanksgiving through New Year's is too long.

Many, many years ago, we stopped buying "live" trees and bought a fake one. Robert bought it at a terrific discount one December 26 when he was working at BEST. The idea of a fake tree has always been a little embarrassing to me, but that's offset by the fact that we don't have to drop $ every year just on a tree. Besides, it never drops needles, and *I* am not the one that ever has to set it up.

Holly and Trevor think a fake tree is normal. (Maybe it is, but it brings to mind those white metal things from the 1970s.) They were shocked when Robert brought home a real tree this year; they were embarrassed by the real tree. It's gorgeous, and trees here are cheap, almost half of what they are in Colorado. (Isn't that funny?)

Our tree finally went up a week or two "late." I just pulled my Christmas dishes down this week (another one of those Dec. 26 BEST sales). We're doing okay on our shopping; I plan to finish it tomorrow. But I've procrastinated endlessly on Christmas cards, so much that I was thinking we might have to send Happy New Year cards instead. For years, we've sent the card photos, and I didn't really consider doing anything different.

In one of my brilliant moments, I decided we ought to head up to the Appalachian Trail to take our pictures. Never mind that we had to wait for good weather. Never mind that we had to drive an hour. Never mind that Robert's not up to hiking of any sort. Never mind that, despite scouring the internet for days, I had absolutely no clue where we were going. Since it was 70 degrees yesterday, I knew it'd be a perfect day to have wonderful family time, AND at least see the Trail, AND get those cards taken care of. AND everyone was thrilled (not).

I missed the first turn and tried for my second option. We ended up a mile down a dead end road, plastered everywhere with NO TRESPASSING signs. We gave up and went back to the first place, eventually finding the reservoir. We asked the ranger which way the Trail was. He pointed to a ridge three miles away--not exactly what I'd had in mind, as we'd planned to be home for dinner. But the lake was gorgeous, and as long as we didn't stay more than ten minutes, the ranger wouldn't charge us the $10 admission fee.



There's nothing like being prepared--not that I would know anything about that. We didn't have any type of tripod for the camera, so set it up along the rail. I kept telling them we'd need more than five photos to get a good family picture.

(This didn't make the cut, as I inhaled so much I almost fell over.)

But they were too busy having that "family fun" to listen to me. They continued to skip rocks into the lake, as I ran toward the car, sure that we'd been there too long.


We'd stopped at a Mexican grocery along the way, in our never-ending search for whole green chiles. We'd stopped in a tack store. On the way out, we wandered through an older, mostly abandoned cemetery, and drove through the gorgeous Hollins University campus.

And the Christmas card picture? We decided to take it at home, down by the creek. By the time we were all ready to go today, it was getting too dark. We ended up taking our pictures on our back deck. Like yesterday, we propped the camera up on the railing, and like yesterday, we took a total of five shots. We finally found a winner! Okay, so we didn't have to drive for an hour, but it wasn't quite as much fun either!