Our family went on the annual trip to buy a Christmas tree last night. We probably should have done it before we went shopping at a Big Store (purchases included a gift for my son's "secret Santa" at school, and Drano for our eternally-clogged bathroom sink) because by the time we got to the tree lot, we were all getting tired and grouchy.

The tree I picked out, everybody else thought it was too short. The tree Lisa wanted I thought was too fat. Lauren just started pointing at random pines saying "THIS one. Can we go home now?" My son, who turned 13 this year has just two answers for any question: "I dunno." or "I don't care." Finally, after a good 20 minutes, we found one that looked okay to everybody, but then I realized that the trunk was probably too thick to fit into our Christmas tree stand.

It was then that either a Christmas Miracle or just a horrible idea occured to Lisa. "Why don't we just take one of the trees that are still tied up?  Couldn't we just throw it on the car and go home?"

I thought about this for a moment. "Yeah, why not?!" So we picked the closest one we saw which was still wrapped tight in twine. Might be thick, might be fat, might have a giant bare spot on it, might have a family of mice living inside. We have no idea. We won't know until we cut it loose and let it unfold. Here's the before picture! We'll cut the twine off and I'll show you the "after" picture tomorrow!