Flying Barrel Of Monkeys

are not decked. But the living room is decorated for the season.

First we had to celebrate the season by ceremoniously hacking down a living tree. We went to one of my friend’s tree farms as we’ve done for the past few years. We’ve also started a odd tradition of seeing how long we can wait before we get the tree. Sometimes its only a day or two before Christmas. This year I wanted one before some friends came over (even if I didn’t get it decorated yet). So Thursday night we ran out to the rainsoaked farm just as the sun was setting.

We selected a tree in a record setting three minutes. MonkeyBoy didn’t understand the time constraints we were under and wanted to wander some more. In this picture, you can see him crying and saying ‘No! No! That one!” as MonkeyMan chopped down our selected tree.

We ended up with a really short tree this year, made shorter today after MonkeyMan snipped half a foot off the top so our star would sit correctly. MonkeyBoy has come around to liking our tree, especially now that it is lit, decorated, and encircled with a remote control train.

I also broke down and bought us stockings this year. I had hopes of making stockings for all three of us, and I even had a pattern book that I’d purchased many years ago and the perfect fabric that I special ordered last year. Unfortunately, the pattern was very intricate and when I started the stockings at one of my craft nights a few months ago I realized my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. There was no way I was going to be able to stitch the stockings, so I admitted defeat and ordered these (on sale!). I will embroider our names on them myself, so at least that part will be “homemade”.

The last thing we did today was to put some decorations on MonkeyBoy’s little artificial tree. I had hoped that if he had a tree of his own he might leave the real tree/ornaments alone but so far that is not the case.