Day 32, Christmas tree Farming

Winter has finally arrived in Texas and Madelyn and I have had to break out our coats and put away our flip flops. Its been getting below freezing almost every night for the past week, and its kind of nice to have the cold air. It doesn’t feel like Christmas when you are wearing shorts. It feels a little strange to be sitting outside in your summer attire, drinking a cold beverage, and singing the lyrics to “Winter Wonderland”. It just doesn’t feel natural…… There is a song that plays on the radio here that suggests that I could make snow angels in the sand, but I don’t think that would help. I liked the warm weather, but it needs to be cold to get into the Christmas spirit. I don’t know if Madelyn welcomed the cold as much as I did. Here is a picture I snapped of Madelyn sleeping, to anybody who knows Madelyn well, this image should not be surprising…. since I had gotten up, she took the chance to double up the blankets. Madelyn is very resourceful when it comes to keeping warm and sleeping in.

As soon as the cold air arrived I knew the first thing we needed to do was hang up Christmas lights, and I was given the task of decorating the house. I hung about 1500 lights in the front yard, and it looks spectacular. I didn’t go too crazy; I wasn’t about to construct a giant inflatable snow globe that has the nativity scene in it (has anyone else seen these?). That not only seems excessive, but also a little sacrilegious. I’m not a bible expert by any means, but I don’t remember their being snow at the birth of Jesus. I stayed with the traditional decorating of lights. I found that it was easy to hang lights up when you are feeling so “Christmasy”, but I quickly realized that taking them down after the New Year is going to remind me how thankful I am that I don’t have to hear “Jingle Bell Rock” for 365 more days.

To top off our Christmas extravaganza weekend, we went to a Christmas Tree farm to pick out a tree. We arrived at a large field full of pine trees; we hopped on a tractor that dropped us off in the middle of a Christmas Tree Forest with a saw. I know this sounds like the beginning of a really great survival type reality show, but the tractors made regular rounds to pick you back up with the Christmas tree you had chosen. We found a really great tree that appeared to be perfect. It's funny how a tree outside seems like the perfect size, but once its erected in your living room, it seems a lot bigger. The tree must have grown on our way home, that’s the only explanation. Luckily the living room is tall, so it fit. Sometimes it takes the observations of an outsider to remind you how silly you look. In this case, it was the cows next door to the Christmas Tree farm that made me question the sanity of chopping down a tree, putting it in your house, and decorating it with lights. The cows were looking at us, riding a tractor, with a bunch of trees, with a look of absolute confusion. I can't imagine what they thought was actually going on, but I doubt that would ever guess what we were actually going to do with those trees. They would have really thought we were nuts. It reminded me of just how silly some of our holiday traditions are.

Finally on Sunday Madelyn and I got the opportunity to get out of the house, and have a good time. We went and saw one of Madelyn’s favorite bands, Mates of State. They were amazing, and we had a really great time. For those of you who are unfamiliar whit the Mates of State music, you can check their music out at: http://www.myspace.com/matesofstate . They are a two person band, drums and a keyboard. They're a lot of fun.