The Waterstraut Waterspout: Ugly Christmas Tree 2019

Shocking, I am behind on blogs. But I've been so busy around here, it's just kind of been put on the back burner. Calib is leaving for Italy on Friday, so we've already done Christmas #1 here (tomorrow night we're celebrating New Years Eve #1). Let me tell you, two Christmas's is a whole lot of work. I'm going to go ahead and never do that again.

But let's rewind to when I last left you about two weeks ago. We had a car issue (AGAIN), so Asa and I had to run Calib and Peyton to school for their finals. So, we dropped them off and then wandered over to Wiregrass to have dinner. Calib, however, took his exam super fast and then we still had to wait for Peyton, who's class hadn't even started yet. So, we watched light show, grabbed a dessert crepe and then made our way to the bookstore.

Which, being in a bookstore with me and Asa for an undetermined amount of time (with a dead phone, no less) is like Calib's worst nightmare.

He was like "take my picture, I'll look smart".

Really, Hayden and Peyton would be happy in a book store for hours. So, 2/3 isn't bad, right? We came across this book, and I thought "this is about 19 years too late for Calib"

Eventually we made our way to the board book section to try and find something for Layla for Christmas. The Baby Shark book kept Calib busy and quiet, until Peyton was done. They got their grades a couple days ago, and Peyton got an A in his history class, while Calib got a B in Psych.

I felt like I was starting to come down with something, that night so Asa hooked me up. He takes pretty good care of me. My anxiety has also been super high with everything to do, and Calib traveling and not being in a routine with Asa's work schedule too. But, I'm powering through. And I still haven't gotten sick, so yay!

Oh my gosh, in all my errands and travels I did come across something amazing though. All you can swirl is back at Racetrac- but it's like what it is forever. No more paying by the ounce!

A couple of Saturdays we were up early for breakfast (look how pretty my pancake is!)

And then we headed out to pick out our Christmas tree. If you've been around for a few years, you probably know our Christmas tradition of picking out the "worst" tree we can find. The Christmas Tree Farm we go to even waits to throw some into the chipper until after we come and chop ours down. Every tree deserves to be a Christmas tree. And, any tree can be pretty enough with some lights and ornaments. Usually we know the tree when we see it. This tree was in contention last year, I remember it specifically. So when we saw it hadn't gotten better with age, we were sold. We did take a loop around the farm, but we knew this one was it.

I mean look how terrible it is. There's giant holes, and branches go everywhere, even in loops.

It looked pretty bad in the field, so we were excited about it.

So we chopped it down and took it up to the front for them to wrap it up and tie it to the car. A bonus of picking out a terrible tree is they always give you a deal. We got this tree for just $25!

While they take care of the tree, we always make our way to the animal pen to see all the baby pigs, rabbits, and chickens.

When we got home, we put the tree in the usual corner, but once we unwrapped it, we realized it wouldn't fit there without partially blocking our bedroom door. (It was one branch on the bottom that really sticks out- and the rule with the ugly trees is that you can't trim them at all).

So we moved the chair out to the living room and put the tree in the other corner of the family room.

And, per Ainsworth/Sattler family tradition we had pizza and Chinese food for dinner.

I really tried to wrap the tree in lights to make it pretty. I ran out of red and white strands though, so it's only red lights at the top. But, you don't notice too much.

This tree is actually really great because it has a lot of really sturdy branches, so we got to hang up all our ornaments. That doesn't always happen because with an ugly tree, you're often lacking branches to hang things on.

This one also reaches to the tippy top of our 10 foot ceiling. But I think it looks pretty anyway.

Even if the bottom is a little lacking.

The boys got their new ornaments (they get one every year). Calib's is from the Italy pavillion at Disney (so it's, of course, made in Italy), while Hayden got a Harry Potter ornament, since this is the year he finished all the books. Peyton got a mini moose mug from National Lampoons Christmas vacation as his (sorry, no picture there- his ornament came later).

We've been playing some more Christmas games for Christmas punches. We tried to draw snowmen on a paper plate on our heads, and then voted on the best one.