One last comment on the day – K and I went out to get a Christmas tree this afternoon. The place we usually go was just about out of trees. In fact, they had run out, but spoke to another tree seller who hadn’t sold all of his trees yet and they bought a good chunk of his stock. Even still, there were only five 7 foot trees, a bunch of 6 foot trees and an 8 foot tree. Unfortunately, the only decent tree was the 8 foot one. Fortunately, we’ve got high ceilings 🙂
Now, back when we used to get a Christmas tree at home, my father’s least favorite part of setting up was getting the tree in it’s stand and perpendicular. For the past two years, that’s been my least favorite part too. You climb under the tree, tighten some screws, have the tree fall over on you, stand it back up, loosen some screws, tighten others; repeat until it’s close enough and then have the tree fall over in the middle of the night.
This year, it finally (laugh all you want) occurred to me that the smart way to set the tree up is to leave it bound in it’s netting while putting it in the stand. This works great. No branches to climb under, it’s easy to tell if the tree is vertical, etc. When done, bring it in the house and cut off the netting – perfect!
We’ll post pictures once it’s decorated.