Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

For the past few years I have purchased my Christmas trees online. For some of you this may be hard to believe. Many of you would never even think of buying a tree sight unseen, but I like it. It is kind of a mystery. The mystery of the tree started a few years back when Jill and I went to the local home improvement super-center to buy a tree. As we arrived the crew was unloading a new shipment of trees and Jill asked if we would have one off the truck. They were still all wrapped up in netting and you could not tell what they looked like. I didn’t really like the idea but I daily live under the following mantra, “Happy wife, happy life!” With the mystery tree tied to the top of the Subaru off we went and when we got home, we were greeted with a tree with… lets just call it character. It was a tree only a mother could love, and Jill thought it was the best. For a few years we just picked up trees without looking at them and I soon began to like this new tradition. A few years later I decided to take this one step further and purchased a tree on the internet, again sight unseen. The first year we had a rather robust and even symmetrical tree, but they all haven’t been that way. This year I placed my order right before Thanksgiving from a place that I had not tried before, and as promised our tree arrived via UPS on my front steps this past Friday. The girls helped me open the box and they were so excited to see their Christmas tree. Our tree grew up on a farm somewhere in Michigan and had no idea it would make a trip to beautiful Long Beach California to fulfill its destiny. As I slid the tree out of the box I noticed that some of the farm came with the tree. It had some mud on the branches and some dead leaves stuck to it. As I placed it in the stand and cut off the net I was greeted by a wonderful surprise. Up in one of the top branches was a well-crafted birds nest. It was the best! The girls wanted to know where the birdie had gone it was a crack-up. So this year our tree came with one decoration of its own. Now the tree is up, the twinkle lights are on the house and it has been downright cold here in SoCal (it was 42 degrees yesterday morning!!) The holidays are in full swing and my girls can’t wait for Santa to bring them presents for Jesus’ happy birthday party. Here is a picture of the nest for your enjoyment. See you next week…