Christmas, you say? Okay, fine.

It was a pretty good week.

Finn got to go to work on Monday:

Obviously, he won the duck battle.  

It snowed!

The flurries lasted for maybe 15 minutes, but it was exciting nonetheless.  I love snow.

This light showed up.

I'm still not sure what it means, but I probably should look into it, huh?

I love this tree.

It lives along the train tracks in our backyard at work.

Friday morning's sunrise was lovely.

The tree went up at work this week.

Our Administrative Assistant was NOT happy about being assigned this task.

She only used one strand of lights, which is why the top is so dark.

What's so bad about being paid to decorate a Christmas Tree?

(And I checked, there aren't any religious objections or anything.)

Our salesman brings coffee every Friday morning.

We've come to expect it, and we're really sad if he doesn't do it.

They're tearing down a bunch of old warehouses down the way from the office.

There are piles and piles of bricks.

I kinda wish I could get my hands on a few truckloads.

I don't know what they're going to build here; I hope it's not a parking lot.

A Panera would be nice.  Or McAlister's.

Melinda and Gary had us over Friday night for a holiday gathering.

Sully and Mike live in her living room. 

How freakin' awesome is that?

I found a box of Christmas stuff that I didn't bother to pull out last year.

Turns out I have ONE strand of double lights left.  

And those Santa Clauses that were my Granny's.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

the missing box of hand-crocheted bells and snowflakes; the rest of the double-lights, unknown ornaments collected over the years that I've forgotten since they went missing.

*sigh*

We're starting over, though.  We'll have things from 2009 forward...

I love this picture so hard.

I took a long nap in the early afternoon yesterday, then got up and played Sims for a while.

I got bored and went back to reading blogs - 

you're all doing so many wonderful, beautiful, traditional Christmas things, 

and I started to get sad that I've not done anything.

So I got up and started cleaning the living room.

I rearranged furniture and washed the slip covers.  I dusted and I vacuumed.

And when Jimi woke from his long nap, I said, "Let's go get a tree" and he said "Okay".

"Wait," I said.  "Do we even know where the Christmas things are?  The ones we still have?"

And so we had to unstack and look through all the boxes in the basement, 

but we found the box with the tree skirt and ornaments since 2009.

Jimi went to clean out his truck,

and I started thinking about what the perfect tree was going to look like,

and how we are going to string marshmallows and popcorn and cranberries to make garland,

and how we're going to make ornaments out of Sculpy so we can grow our collection for future Christmases.

And I started thinking about how much "live" Christmas trees cost.

And how good they smell.

And how I haven't had one since that first year when we lived on Camp Street...

Jimi picked that one up on his way home from work one night, as a surprise.  

I'd forgotten about that.  Aww.  

And the needles make such a mess, because they're not really "live", they're dead.  Cut down.

I went out to the drive where Jimi was moving the ladder from his truck to the garage.

"Don't be mad," I said.  "Okay," he said.  "I think I'm just going to decorate the Love Tree."  "Okay."

And that's what we did.  

We saved our $50, we saved a tree, 

and we saved me from picking pine needles out of the carpet in March.

YAY!

Our Christmas Tree has blooms and is alive.  

And Baby Jesus/Woodstock lived on the Blu-ray player, happily ever after.

Wait.  

That's not how that story goes, is it?  

Shut up.  

It's Christmas; we can pretend.