"It's not going in our yard, Russ, It's going in our living room."

Hope everyone had a great weekend.  We had a really busy but also a lazy and relaxing weekend.  While Ben was away at practice Friday night, I had sushi with a few friends and we went and saw Love and Other Drugs.    The sushi was delicious and the movie was alright.  It had some funny moments but it was overall predictable and there were way too many raunchy scenes.  Saturday, I got some errands run, including picking myself up a couple of items from Ann Taylor Loft with some birthday money that has been patiently waiting to be passed along to some fine retailer. They were having a 30% off sale SCORE! We settled in to watch the SEC championship. BORING.  I usually love watching football, even if its not SEC but Saturday's game was for the birds.  I didn't care the outcome either way but I do think Auburn is going to pull it out in the NC game and the SEC will have another national championship. I mean whoever believes the SEC isn't the best conference needs to have their head examined and then pick a team so they can start cheering for the best conference. We had some friends from Ole Miss passing through the 'ham so we offered for them to stay with us.  We invited Patrick and Megan over and we cooked a meal that is meant for sharing and watched Ole Miss basketball take on Southern Miss. The Rebs got the W and we had fun just hanging out.

Sunday Funday turned into Sunday worday...wah wah.  We set out early Sunday afternoon to get our Christmas tree.  After some internet research we found a tree farm 15 miles from our doorstep so we decided to head out to the country and find our perfect tree.  You see, that is what we have done the 2 previous Christmases.  However, we were also living in South MS and had the best little tree farm right up the road, Smith's Christmas Tree Farm.   This great little tree farm is also owned by some friends of ours family.  So you see, they would take us out to the best parts of the farm that had the best batch of trees EVER and let us pick from them.  Not to mention, the friendliess of South MS folks and warmer temperatures.  We didn't quite have the same experience yesterday.  Bummer #1  It was maybe 40 degrees, if we were lucky.  Bummer #2 They did not have our favorite, Carolina Sapphires "this year" Bummer #3 The prices were not tree farm prices, I guess they thought they were the Saks of tree farms  Bummer #4 No live wreaths...ok there are plenty more bummers but I do not want to sound whiney & ungrateful.  So after about an hour of walking around and finding nothing but massive 9 ft. and plus trees and Frayser Firs that had been shipped in that were ridiculously over-priced, we debated on leaving and just heading to Lowe's to pick up one of their shipped in, more reasonbly priced trees.  However, we decided to walk over to a little area of the farm we had not visited.  Well it was in this area that we found our tree.  A beautifully-shaped Leeland Cypress that had the perfect price.  We couldn't believe it.  We got it strapped on to the top of the Yukon and headed back to the city.  Before we left we had cleared out what we thought was the perfect space for our new tree.  After yours truely and Ben carted the tree up two flights of winding stairs, we realized either our living room had shrunk or this tree was much much larger than it appeared out in the wilderness next to all the ridiculously large trees.  It was definitely the latter.  This has not been a problem in the past because we had the people who knew our house and knew the space and could help us choose the perfect tree.  Did I mention we live in an apartment? On the 3rd floor with a dog that escaped the looney bin?  After numerous 4-letter words and furniture rearranging, we got the tree settled in the tree stand.  As Ben started cutting the netting off the tree, I felt like Ellen in Christmas Vacation as Clark was cutting the rope away from their tree.  And thats pretty much what happened, minus windows breaking and such.  I had to go fetch the hedge clippers that we had thankfully kept when we moved.  We had so many clippings from our Griswald tree that I made a swag for the front door and plenty leftover to dump off the balcony.  It was finally time to start decorating.  We got all lights put up that we have used on our previous trees to realize we were only about halfway up.  So I send Ben to Home Depot to pick up more while I start on a soup and chocolate chip pound cake for dinner.  By 7, the tree was FINISHED.  As we laid in bed that night, much like Clark & Ellen Griswald, I turned to Ben and said, "I have a confession, I hate our tree."  to which he replied, "you know, I don't really like it either."  This of course started the debate of what we should do...go get a new one more appropriate for our living quarters or just suck it up for a couple of weeks, even if our guests do have to turn sideways to shimmy into the guest bedroom.  Well, the conclusion was made that we are extrememly fortunate to be able to afford something as silly as a tree that we will throw out in a few short weeks and that it will be a GIANT reminder of why we celebrate Christmas, because of Christ's generous gift of his only son. 

When we ran out of lights

Finished

Happy Monday Y'all!