My Pathetic Wonderful Tree

So, I do NOT have time for blogging right now, but I'm going to.

First of all, I love Christmas and I love Christmas Trees! I love REAL trees, LOTS and LOTS of lights, and then more lights. (I currently prefer white lights, but grew up loving the mulit-colored)

Now that we have that established, my story.

I love our tree! It's a weird shape--heavy on the bottom and VERY light on the top. It is pretty scragly--not a lot of branches for ornaments.

It had to be 'enhanced'.

"What is 'enchancement'?" you say? Well, it's a little known art established years ago by...ranchers who had hundreds and thousands of trees on their land, but no time to prune them throughout the year. These same ranchers thought it was ridiculous to spend hard earned money buying a tree that they could just as easily cut down in their own back yard. And lastly, these ranchers could not afford to take a WHOLE day at the beginning of december to go Christmas Tree Hunting on someone else's land--have to feed the cows you know.

So these ranchers cut down a tree that looked "pretty darn good" and then a couple extra branches for good measure. When you get home, you put the tree up to it's most flattering angle and then start adding in branches with your drill and some good deck screws.

The family and friends stand back and say helpful things like, "A little more to the right", "There's a bald spot over to the left there", and "Hey! I think you have a bald spot from this angle."

After about an hour of enhancing, I started putting the lights on our new tree. LOTs and LOTs of lights. About 5 strings. But, she "shines like Orion's Belt when I'm out on the ice." Each branch is individually wrapped up and down. It's really quite majestic. AND I'm the only one in the family that does it. Guess that's what I get for being so darn picky.

And I LOVE our tree--no, it's not a perfect triangle, like some fake tree. Yes, it takes over 4 hours from bringing it in the house to completion. Yes, it is a weird shape and guests literally laugh out loud when they lay eyes upon it. Yes, it looks a little like a Dr. Suess tree with a large amount of ribbon gathered at the top.

We call 'er Martha Suess. The tree, that is.

Yes, you have to be carful how you hang your ornaments because some of those branches aren't quite attatched.

But you know what? I love it! I love it because I'm blessed.
So blessed.
I don't need some fancy prelit tree, I've got one that my husband cut down with a hand saw. He wants to go with me and search until we find a tree he knows I'll love.
I don't need some fancy tree from a tree lot, all perfectly shaped, we cut a scragly one down as a family, on our ranch. unbelievable.
I don't need some predecorated tree, I've got years and years of ornaments from my family that loves me and I love them more than words can say. And everytime I unwrap those ornaments every year, I think of them.

I love Christmas, spending time with family, traditions, celebrating the gift of Jesus Christ, God's own Son.

But, I also have a tree on the ground right now, because it fell over.

I think this is the 3rd year in a row.

I'm going to appreciate my little beautiful Martha Suess tree this year, because...

I'm also going to see if any of those fake trees are going to be on clearance next week.