Christmas Tree Question

What happens when you combine a 10ft. crooked-trunked, fully decorated Christmas tree, a rambunctious 7 month old Labradoodle and 2 young boys left unattended for a quick potty break?

A horizontal, fully UNDECORATED 10ft. tree that is impossible for a 5'6" woman to reseat in the stand!

Had to call Jeremy and have him come home during his lunch break to stand the tree back up. Took three days to fully, properly reseat and redecorate. Do you know how difficult it is to take pics of a lit Christmas tree without it looking.....well, just not right?

On the bright side of things, most of our light strands were broken and the lights we had didn't wrap the entire tree on the first go around, so it looked wonky. The re-do allowed me to go buy the blue lights I really wanted and use those. The kids think it looks like a million little fireflies live in the tree now.

I am so secretly anal about the tree decorating that the crash actually was a relief. It allowed for the warm family moment of decorating the tree together and the blissful, organized, precisely paced ornament and light redecoration in the quiet after-hours of bedtime!

It's a sickness ~ I know......

So, I have this thing about ornaments. Some people like perfectly themed trees...Pier One glass balls, all butterflies or all flowers, stuff like that. In the spirit of the holidays, I can't fathom how the "facade of perfection" wins out over the romantic nostalgia carefully chosen, annually bought ornaments offer. Sure, the tree looks like a mish-mash of ideas and hobbies, fleeting obsessions and "what the heck were we thinkings." But that mish-mash provides the kind of warm, familial "rememberies" that are strong enough to blanket any crazy cousin......

Here are a few of my favorite "rememberie" ornaments:

1. This was the ornament my grandparents gave me for my very first Christmas! It's held up pretty well, wouldn't you say?

2. This one was made by yours truly when I was in first grade. From what I remember, it was clay into a mold, kiln-baked, glazed and hand-painted! If this ever broke I think I would cry!

3. This was the first ornament Logan ever made. It was a project he and Jazzy did. We took pics on the beach, collected shells and here's the result! I love this silly thing!

4. Jeremy and I had this made our first Christmas together.

5. Logan's first Christmas

6. My mom makes such great ornaments!

7. Bought this one a couple days ago. Bird feathers - random, I know, but I thought it was really pretty.

Now, for your viewing pleasure....the mantle. Never had a mantle before. Fun to decorate....still have to put some pine garland across the top, though.

I searched FOREVER for the perfect nativity and finally found the dream one last year...on wicked clearance no less! The beauty of this is that each handcarved piece has a part of the Christmas story painted on it so that when all the pieces are together, the story of Christ's birth is perfectly displayed. LOVE IT!

Yes, that's a Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas to be precise.

Though the kids know there is no Santa Claus (why are we gonna let a fat, judgemental, only-works-one-night-a-year, stranger take credit for the gifts Jeremy worked so hard to provide?) we still celebrate the unbelievable truth of who Saint Nicholas was! Google it and you will be amazed at how many cultures have their own "Saint Nicholas" legend. One of the earliest and most well documented stories of the "true" Nicholas is a story of a pastor of a small town who loved his people greatly. One day, close to the holidays, he learned that one of the men in the town had three daughters and was not able to afford their dowries, thus forcing all of the daughters to remain unmarried, very unhappy spinsters. Nicholas' heart ached for the man and, on Christmas Eve, he stole away to the man's house with three small satchels. He opened the window and found, as was the custom in those days, the girls boots all lined up under the window. He dropped one satchel in each of the sets of boots and went back home. In the morning, the girls each found that the satchels contained exactly enough gold coins to cover their dowries! The joy that spread through the town as the people learned of the anonymous deed so touched Nicholas that each year after on Christmas Eve, he dressed in his finest robes and went around to all the houses in the town and delivered small presents through the open windows.

And so the legend grew! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

The first month

Okay, so when you're looking for a house and you find one that instantly clicks, there's a romantic part of your brain that shuts down all logic and reason and all you see is "the dream."  Then you move in and reality sets in and well, let's just say, turns out the house needs FAR more work than we realized.  But, there is an upside to 5 acres of dilapidated fences, poorly grassed pastures, jimmy-rigged barn apartments and more hand-sized spiders than one can count.  FREEDOM.  The freedom to be, the freedom to do and the freedom to live the dream.  So, here we are.  On a farm in the middle of Florida, making far less money, away from all the people, activities and comforts of familiarity, settling into what seems to be shaping up to be a pretty nice change of pace.

So, some of you have asked for observations, updates and the like.  Well, here goes....

1. Got a pig.  She had 5 piglets.  3 sold, 2 died.   She's sweet, but who knew disposing of her waste would be a full time job?  So nasty.

2. Wanted fresh milk, got some goats.  Lower lactose, higher fat, better for you.  2 pregnant does

and 1 very horny buck.

All I have to say is.....don't ever turn your back to him!  Girls are due sometime before Christmas, so you all can expect some killer goat's milk fudge in your future!

3. Spiders suck.  Cannot TELL you how much I hate them.  How fortunate for me that there are more species and sizes of spiders here than I can keep track of!  Ironic enough....there is a large spider who has made her home across the opening of the pig pen.  We've named her Charlotte.  

When you walk outside in the morning, the dewey grass sparkles with thousands of little grass webs.  Never seen anything like this - pretty cool, though.

4. I thought trading in palm trees for oak trees would be fantastic.....uh, NO.  Hundreds of thousands of acorns crunching under your feet - beautifully romantic sound.  The MESS from hundreds of thousands of acorns crunching under your feet - P I t A.

5. Wanted fresh eggs, got some chickens.  Realized very quickly chickens are persnickety and will only lay during the winter if the sun, moon, and stars are all in the proper alignment, you praise and compliment them every morning and sing them a  lullaby every night and pray for a miracle.  Maybe it's just the breed I got.  Call me shallow, but I wanted CUTE chickens....whatever.

Let's hope we get some action soon or Snowball I and Santa's Little Helper will be coming to dinner! (Props BTW to those who caught the pop culture reference in the names!)

6. Okay, so we have these ginormous troughs out in the pastures for the horses' water, right?  They get filled up by the rain, and woodland creatures of all types help themselves.  No problem there.  Walking out in the morning and finding a squirrel float  - problem THERE!  (Out of respect for Nichole, I will NOT post the pic - pretty nasty though).

7. Farm work is hard, ya'll!  From mending fences to mucking out stalls (still aghast at the amount of poo I have to clean up!) to feeding and watering animals...this is a better work out than any $30/month gym membership!  Come spring, we're planting a fruit/veggie garden.  Let's hope my black thumb didn't make the move with us!

8.  There's nothing better than a warm fireplace on a cold evening!  So long as the wood is stacked properly, the floo is open and the entire house doesn't fill up with smoke!

9. Finally - first AWESOME experience in the city vs. farm life:  getting to find and cut our own Christmas tree from the local Christmas tree farm!  There's is nothing cooler for a little boy than to help his dad cut down his very own Christmas tree!

So far.....City Life: 0, The Simple Life: 100