I can finally talk about it

It's after Christmas, I can bring myself to recount the horrible tale now. This is the story of our Christmas tree.

Each year for the past 4 or 5 years we've gone to a local tree farm and selected and sawed down our own tree. The farm is really nice, they have hay rides, and farm animals for the kids to visit with. They hide little ornaments in the field of baby trees that aren't ready to be cut yet and let the children go for a treasure hunt. If they return with an ornament they get to pick a little prize from a box. It's all very wonderful and good family time. (The farm is called Santa's Forest Choose and Cut Christmas Tree Farm. I looked but they don't seem to have a website)

This year, however, the Sprout was going to be with her biological father on Christmas tree getting weekend so we decided just to grab one of those trees outside the grocery store.

Oi.

Boo and I had not been having the best of days, it was COLD and raining, we were both irritated. I said something along the lines of "Oh, just grab one" He grabbed the first one and we brought it home.



You may not be able to tell, I tried to take as flattering a picture as possible,though blurry (again) but the tree is no where near the classic Christmas tree shape. Ordinarily this wouldn't bother me. My crunchy granola side would pipe up and say "hey, it's more natural looking, it's not a Frankentree at all" The problem with it's un-shapeliness is that the top is bigger than the bottom. I don't know if you've been to physics class lately but when something's top is bigger than it's bottom it tends not to be particularly stable.

The tree has fallen. Twice.



I'm really beginning to think the ornaments look better on the ottoman.

Another problem the tree has, which isn't helped at all by bumping into the floor is that it's sort of flat. I guess it's from being shipped, but it's sort of folded up like an umbrella.

Oh and did I mention that when I opened the box of ornaments there were no lights? Apparently I threw them out last year, (they had a short) and forgot about it.

But it's a tree. It smells nice. It looks nice when it's lights are lit and all the other lights in the house aren't.

OK, I'm going to take it to the compost heap now.

This one time at band camp. . .

Ok, so it wasn't band camp it was gym class. My friends, I'll call them Jennifer, Tenille, and David, cause those are their names, and I didn't want to play basketball in the gym again.

Is it just me or does everyone remember high school gym class as nothing but pickup games of half court basketball?

Anyway, back to the story, we went down to the tennis courts which were behind the school and down a hill. My high school was in a very rural area so the tennis courts bordered the woods behind the school. There was a football field to the right and a cow pasture to the left if you're interested in that kinda thing.

We didn't want to play tennis either mind you, buncha slackers we were. So we were down there goofing off when we decided to go into the woods. No, there wasn't any adult supervision, why do you ask?

There was a clearing in the woods scattered with beer cans and cigarette butts. As we were walking through the clearing, I looked down and saw the sole of a shoe sticking up through the dirt. Of course, as any logical teenage girl would I screamed and pointed it out to my friends.

We poked at it and it felt solid. We were sure there was a foot inside. We made David dig it up. He slowly dug around the shoe with a large stick digging deeper and deeper until he uncovered a dead body. Not really, he just uncovered an old shoe packed full of dirt.

Good times.

Lists, lists lists

When I decided that I was going to start blogging much more regularly, the first thing I did was make a list of possible future topics. Things that have happened recently. That's when i decided I'd blog about my love of lists.

I make lists of everything. I make grocery lists, lists of errands I need to do, lists of the things I've bought for dinner for the week, lists of things I need to do around the house (vacuum, sweep, bleah), everything. Here's a list of some tradeskill information from World of Warcraft.



And that's my beloved notebook, I have to keep a notebook like this easily accessible at all times for list making purposes. I'm lost without it. Boo says I make lists of my lists, and although he's joking I actually have done that before. I've listed the contents of storage boxes, and then packed the list into the box where it's completely useless as a reference tool. I've written things on lists of things to do that have already done, just so some things can be marked off.

Other than the lists I'm really not organized, promise.

The Sock Saga

I used the cash I received for my birthday to buy yarn to make Boo and the Sprout some socks. This is not as unselfish as it sounds. The enjoyment I get out of knitting comes from the act of knitting. I don't care what I knit or who it's for, I just want to knit. Besides, I'd already knitted myself a pair of socks.

This is my favorite part of knitting socks. It's called "turning the heel". I've heard lots of people bemoan the horror of turning the heel, but really it's my favorite part!

Forgive the blurriness, please. I had the camera set on the wrong focus and didn't realize until it was too late.



It's like magic, one minute you have a flat piece of knitting and the next, you have a little cup for the heel to eventually live in. I go around the house trying to get people to put their noses in, but they never cooperate.



So I was bopping along, perfectly happy in sock land, then i see this . . .



I know it's blurry also, but you can hopefully see that it's a ball band. An empty ball band.

It's immediately followed by this . . .



What's that you ask? That, my friends, is an unfinished Sprout sock.

Tragic.

Now I have to drive for half an hour to buy one skein/ball of yarn to do a small portion of the foot and the toes of the sock. What, I ask you, am I supposed to do with the leftovers from that ball? I don't think the Sprout is going to grow a third foot anytime soon.

Le sigh

2008 Christmas Tree Lighting

Just some pictures today.

Our town recently held it's 50th annual Christmas parade and tree lighting ceremony. My daughter, being a member of her school choir, sang at the ceremony.

Here the choir director tries to herd them into a line to practice.



Here she is waiting to preform, she's gonna hate that picture one day :P



Here, this ones better, no strange faces in this one. This is her and her bestest friend Macy.



Oh and the tree in case you wanted to see