We're smiling! (and we have a tree)

When I say we, I mean Macy. Greg and I learned how to smile a long time ago.

At first it took a lot of work to get even the smallest grin on her little face. Now it doesn't take much, but we still make fools of ourselves. So here are some pictures of Macy sporting her newfound facial expression.




We also decorated for Christmas a week or two ago, so here's our tree. We made the ornaments last year, so it pretty much looks the same as last year. And was a lot easier (and cheaper) to decorate this year.


In my family, we switched to the fake tree some time ago. You don't have to put the lights on every year, or spend $50+, or water it, or clean up the mess it makes, or get rid of it when Christmas is over. Last year, Greg swindled me into purchasing a real tree. I liked it, so it stuck. I'm sure it won't last forever though.

Part of what we like about real Christmas trees is the time we get to spend together in the cold while we try to figure out which tree we want. Isn't that precious? We're both so indecisive that we wander around the lot forever, decide to choose between two, and then end up picking a completely different one that didn't stick out to us initially. What can I say, we live dangerously here.

Then we get to tie the Christmas tree to our car. The salesman tosses the tree on top of our car, making a wretched nails-on-a-chalkboard sound if you're sitting in the car with the baby. The sound makes you wonder if half the paint is now scratched off the car, but it's all still there when you check. Greg and the aforementioned salesman then wrap thin twine around and around the tree and tie it to the handles inside your car, but Greg still drives like an old lady just in case. (The salesman said to keep it under 90 mph.)

When we got the tree home, it wouldn't fit into the tree stand we have. So Greg cut branches off the bottom with the only saw we have--a drywall saw. It actually worked.

And that is the unintentionally lengthy story of how we got our Christmas tree and why it's real. Thank you and good night.