The exact opposite of the Charlie Brown tree

We love to get a big tree at Christmas time- we always have, I've already told you about our ornament legacy that we will leave behind, so in order to support all those ornaments we have to get a big tree. This year it got embarrassing. In the past we'd get a modest 7 footer to fit in our first house. When we moved here, we were geeked at the prospect of getting something bigger. The first year was 9', the next 10', last year we got an 11 footer and this year we got greedy and our eyes were bigger than our living room and we purchased a 12 1/2' tree. It's huge - when we brought it in and stood it up it bend at the top, it was so full it needed to be in the middle of the room in order not to scratch the walls. Hmm, this is a bit bigger than we imagined. So even though our roof peak in our living room is above 14' - we didn't account for the fact that the tree won't be right up against the wall. So what to do? We laughed, my dad, who had come down to visit for the weekend, just sat on the couch saying over and over - wow that is a BIG tree - it was one step above sucking his thumb in the fetal position. I personally was waiting for a squirrel to jump out of the tree National Lampoon's style -but fortunately we were rodent free. Bless Ryan's heart he hacked the back of the tree enough to get it into the corner and then had to whittle down the top for our star to fit on it - I'm not kidding our tree should probably have gone in the White House. The picture doesn't do it justice - you just feel really, really small next to this behemoth of a tree. For sense of scale the picture frame on the wall behind the tree are 22" x 28" ...

The best news is that we got ALL of our ornaments on the tree and NONE had to be relegated to the back. Our ribbon was short and at that point Ryan was short on patience so while I like to have my ribbon lay nicely with gaps and such, ours currently looks a bit mummy like because Ryan pulled it to work and that's with TWO different types of ribbon - we had a third, but as my mom would say - it would look too poleneshika (or Greek for "polish" sorry all my polish friends...) All in all though - it turned out well - and I am happy to enjoy it's amazing pine smell, which is strong since it's so damn big. But most of all I enjoy looking at all of the ornaments, the ones past and present. Ryan got one for me last year that by far is my favorite on the whole tree- it was in memory of mom and it kind of sums it all up.

Every life leaves something beautiful behind.

Thanks!