On the Fourth and Fifth Day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me a Christmas tree!

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Last year, when we finally and safely got the Christmas decorations down from our attic, I thought, "Hmmm...something is missing. Where is our tree?"

Our tree was a 5ft, scraggly thing that leaned to one side that we bought for $15 at Goodwill our very first Christmas. We fondly dubbed it "The Charlie Brown Tree" because in the end it didn't look too bad once it was given some TLC.

(Please tell me you know what I'm referencing here. I have received some blank stares before...).

Our Charlie Brown tree all spruced up

(and anchored to the wall because it really did lean quite a bit)

We went looking for it everywhere: our shed, our utility closet, under beds and in closets. Then finally, I recollected that it fell over the year before and became irreparably broken, not even Linus's blanket could save this tree and we ended up throwing it away. We had planned on buying another tree at the after-Christmas sales but I guess we never made it, obviously. We couldn't afford to buy one right then in the middle of the chaos that is called Christmas shopping.

So we decorated our fake ficus tree. It was depressing. I had to chant "The Christmas tree is NOT the true meaning of Christmas" over and over again for about two weeks. The chant eventually worked and we had a nice Christmas but I was determined to buy a tree at the end of that season.

This past Monday for FHE (Family Home Evening) we put up and decorated our new tree for it's very first Christmas. (I know many of you probably had your trees up weeks ago. Like I said, I'm just not able to make it happen until around the 14th.)

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Please note that our cat Daisy is present in every picture we have of our new tree. She loves the Christmas tree as it being her first Christmas tree since it seems she did not consider the ficus tree a "real" Christmas tree either. Our cats have made it interesting and even dangerous to set up, decorate and to keep decorated our tree. Maybe they're just prepping us for when Aurora is a little more mobile next year.

(Sorry, the video is a little dark. As we were setting up the tree Daisy would leap into the tree and attack.)

Finished product:

Here is the best gift ever:

(This is a sneak peek at one of the Christmas pics we will be putting in our Christmas email and blog post. Sorry, no cards... I'm lucky to send an email out before Christmas, let alone cards.)