Thank goodness.

It was two days after Thanksgiving and we still didn’t have Christmas decorations up.  I thought my son would have a heart attack.  Never mind that the calendar still said November … it was after Thanksgiving and that was all the excuse he needed.

The Christmas tree lots had gone up around town, so we went in search of the perfect tree.  We went to every single lot.  Let me repeat … we went to EVERY SINGLE lot.

Thank goodness there are only five places to buy trees in our town.  You see, finding that one tree that both kids think is “the tree” is impossible.  My son wants the tallest, fattest (most expensive) tree in town.  If he had his druthers, we would move all the furniture out of the Family Room and just have a tree in the center.  My daughter wants one with a perfect shape, preferably with layers to hang ornaments easily, and one that is not so fat.

I reminded them repeatedly that no matter which tree we selected, it would be beautiful after we decorated it.  They looked at each other and both said, “Yeah … let’s go with mine.”

I told them if they couldn’t come to a decision, we were not going to get a tree at all.  At the last lot, they were deadlocked between two trees, and looked to me to break the tie.  Thank goodness they agreed that no matter which one I selected, the other would go along with the decision.  FINALLY, we loaded up the tree and headed for the house.

I was already exhausted, both physically and mentally, and it was only 6 o’clock.  I knew I had to hold up for Phase II … hauling all the decorations out of the attic.  My husband was out of town hunting with some friends, so it was up to my son to crawl up there and hand them down.

I heard a muffled exclamation, “They’re not up here!”  We all ended up in the attic, searching for the nonexistent boxes.  We looked in the garage, in closets, and under beds.  Nada.  Paranoia was kicking in … “Who would steal all my Christmas decorations?”

It finally dawned on us that during our last move, my husband had taken them all to a storage barn to get them out of the way.  The only problem was that this barn was an hour away on some land his family owns.

Thank goodness my husband had left his truck at home.  Since there’s no good time to do stuff like this, we hopped in and high-tailed it to the barn. 

Halfway there it dawned on me that I had never driven to this place without my husband, and I didn’t know if I could even find it. 

Thank goodness for cell phones.  I called one of the other wives, who gave me the phone number of the log house where the guys were staying (yes, it has a phone and no, they weren’t roughing it).

I can only imagine the jokes and jabs when they told my husband his wife was on the phone.

Well, to make a long story short, it’s a good thing I called ‘cuz I wouldn’t have ever found it.  We loaded everything up, made it back okay, but were too tired to unload it all.

Thank goodness my son had listened to the weather report.  We pulled the back end of the truck into the garage just in case it rained.  It rained five inches that night.

The next day we regrouped, unloaded the boxes, and decorated the tree.  THANK GOODNESS that was over.

It was still raining and had gotten cold, so we couldn’t decorate the outside of the house.  So, we built a fire, turned on the Christmas tree lights, and sat down in front of the fire with hot chocolate and counted our blessings.

Thank goodness for our family, our home, the fire, hot chocolate.  And thank goodness for our Christmas tree.