Woke up this morning, got the kids dressed and ready, and headed directly to the mall. Getting there at 9 was a good idea: we found a parking space easily, there was no one in Target, and I knew precisely what I was there for so we could get in and out. Although we were in the mall long enough to let the kids play in the Kids Area and get lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.
I still have a few things to get, mainly for my three-year-old nephew. You’d think I’d have a handle on what three-year-old boys need and/or want. You would be totally wrong. I’m thinking I’m going to need to hit Gap Kids early in the morning. Remember how when we were kids we hated getting the clothes presents? As a parent, I love the clothes presents. It makes life so much easier.
The main thing I’m working on now is the shopping list for this weekend’s festivities. I think I’m going to have to pick up a large ice chest to hold drinks, so I have more room in the fridge. Of course, I was at Target today; did that occur to me? It did not. Sigh.
I don’t know how the shopping season is going this year; the mall never felt particularly crowded. Not much in the way of lines, except for the cars that piled up to get our parking space.
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This year we have a tree. A gigantic noble fir, about six and a half or seven feet tall. Sophia picked it out; she was also the driving force behind getting a tree. We haven’t decorated it yet. I bought some boxes of generic ornaments and some tinsel. I’ve told the kids they can get one special ornament each; if we do that every year, after a few years we’ll have a decent selection of ornaments.
I asked around for info on how to tell if you’re buying a decent tree. Here’s what I heard: check to make sure the trunk has sticky resin on it and that the needles bend but don’t break. Plus, make sure the tree places cuts a part off of the trunk to expose it to the water in the tree stand, and refill the tree stand every day.
Why didn’t I know how to pick out a tree? My parents always got the tree on Christmas Eve. Perhaps this was some kind of tradition, but most likely it was because trees are really cheap by then. At least, that’s what we did after we moved to San Francisco. In Connecticut we had a fake tree that we put together every year, each branch color-coded with a tie my mother had attached to it.
But now I have a big-assed real tree with a sticky trunk in my living room. All I have to do now is dress it.
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Hey, Happy Holidays to me! I won an iPod Nano! From Blue-Tec Software, makers of the Ulysses text editor, as part of their Nanos for NaNo(WriMo) contest. Woo hoo! This is completely unexpected — in fact, I’d forgotten I’d entered.
Ah, poor iPod Shuffle, I hardly knew ye… although I used you for my workouts all the time.
And now I have to get 2 gigs of workout music. I have lots of music, but not so much of it the stuff you need for workouts. Amazon, here I come!
Darin: “Honey, you realize with the Nano all of your money goes toward the accessories. The armband, the case…”
Those covetible, collectible glass ornaments (puss-in-boots, mad hatter, peter pan, etc.) all go on sale right after Christmas. We started allowing the kids to pick out an ornament both before and after, with a limit on what they could spend. It turned into effortless lessons about marketing and personal finance, and increased our ‘heirloom’ acquisition rate, as well.
RE: My parents always got the tree on Christmas Eve.
I always thought it was an Irish thing. My Dad was adamant about it. You get the tree on Christmas Eve, decorate it as a family, keep it up until Epiphany, and then burn it on Epiphany (at night). Nowadays my brother buys the tree a few days ahead of time but will not bring it into the house until Christmas Eve.
Well, the Irish thing would certainly explain why my parents got it on Christmas Eve. And we did get rid of it on the Epiphany, only instead of burning it we put it curbside (the modern version).
This year, however, the high school band is doing a fundraiser on Jan. 1, so out the door the tree goes on Jan. 1!