Bah Humbug

"Bah Humbug"Saturday's party left all of us exhausted. I admit it, I was grumpy and sore Sunday morning, so I stayed in bed. As I laid there in my bah humbug mood, I remembered the pastor preaching last Sunday about being too tired to come to church during the Christmas season because of all the other stuff going on. I thought I would go but I didn't get very far. I could barely stand, my back hurt, my legs hurt, and I still had the headache that I had gotten immediately after the party the afternoon before. So home we stayed because Haley was tired too. She however got a burst of energy and my husband took her for a bike ride, which was later regretted(They took 2 loops which is about 3.5 miles). I stayed home and went back to bed. When they came back, the bah humbugs were in the house again! They just come in when you are not looking. We were growling and grumping like we were Scrooge himself! The house was a mess and we still needed to make room for our tree.

We finally made it out of the house clean and neat to go find our tree with camera in hand. I look forward to finding a tree each year and the pictures that come along with it. I discovered when people are tired and cranky the pictures tend to reflect it.

We arrived at the place Haley had chosen to look for a tree. We walked up and they had a giant Santa Claus that you could take pictures with and we got a few. We were then off to hunt for our special tree. Haley took off, scampering down the aisles of trees and finding pine cones on the floor along the way. She found the manger scene and we took a few pictures, then she saw it. She saw the tree that she wanted-love at first site with a tree. She was stroking the branches and bonding with the tree!!!! It was a eastern white pine and she wanted it. It was all wrong. It must have been 10 feet tall, we would have had to knock a whole in our roof since we have old low ceilings. She didn't care it was too big or cost $100, she just wanted that tree. She said we could put it outside. What???? When we said "No!" with reasons to back our no up, she teared up and cried, over a beloved tree. You would have thought that it was a hurt animal the way she carried on. Bless her little tender heart, we wished we could get it for her. We took her picture in front of the tree so that she could always remember it, I even said that maybe we could find one to plant, she kept crying. We dragged her away and kept looking. We finally found a tree that my husband and I both liked, she wouldn't even consider another. The one we picked was cute and fat! We paid for our new fat tree and went straight home. In the truck she cried, wanting to know why it was so unreasonable to get the tree she wanted-at this point it was the exhaustion of the party and the 3.5 mile bike ride talking, so we just decided to feed her and let the cry fest run it's course.

We got home and put the tree in the stand and filled the base with water and paused to eat dinner. After we ate, we put the Santa Clause movie in and I started to put the lights on the tree. I was trying to lighten the mood and create some Christmas spirit to chase the bah humbugs away. It was working, we were enjoying the movie, we had just named our tree "FAT CHARLEY" when I was reaching for the light socket and Fat Charley fell over. Water went everywhere, I am screaming for help and towels. The Bah Humbugs were jumping up and down, slipping in and mopping up the water, and struggling with Fat Charley to get him out of the base and back in again straight. If ever in the world there was a time to say BAH HUMBUG, it was at that moment. We finally got Fat Charley steady and watered, I sat down and relaxed and watched the movie with Haley before carrying on with the decorating. Towards the end of the movie, Haley and I started once again to decorate our chubby Christmas tree and we enjoyed ourselves. She got a kick out putting the garland around Fat Charley, especially since he didn't fall on top of her. We had no more chaos, only Christmas cheer as we hung our ornaments on the tree. May Fat Charley sing for joy in its purpose of a Christmas tree.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;

Let the sea resound, and all that is in it;

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them,

Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;

They will sing before the LORD, for he comes,

Psalm 96:11-13