The Christmas Tree

So I couldn't possibly feel right with myself or the world if I did not dedicate a whole post to our faithful little Christmas tree. You see, Brad and I knew that we would be going home for Christmas but both of us are Christmas junkies and couldn't stand the thought of not having our very own Christmas tree. So right before we went home, we decided to pick this little beauty up from the side of the local grocery store and give it a nice little home. Mind you this was like a week before Christmas and the tree probably had been cut down in like mid July because it would seem that most Christmas tree harvesters think that the tree needs to be good and dry before you ever even get the chance to put it up, and further dehydrate the poor thing. But anyway, I digress from the story. So this little tree came to reside in our home and we dried some oranges and made ornaments out of them and budgeted in some cute little Christmas lights and some candy canes. We even had a couple or ornaments from our wedding that we adorned our fine little tree with. Brad had to put me on a Christmas decorating budget because he was the only one with good enough sense to know that the two of us would end up buying out the stores of all Christmas decor and would have to probably eat the stockings and tree skirt in a stew in order to survive the next few months. But anyway, this tree not only lasted until we got back from our Christmas vacation in Montana, but continued to survive until about the beginning or middle of March with little to no watering. We kept waiting for the tree to get crispy enough that we didn't feel bad about throwing it out, and it kept lasting and lasting. We honestly considered making Easter decorations for it. Finally we decided enough was enough and even though the bottom of the tree was still supple and fresh, the top was getting a little crispy and we really wanted to use (for the first time) the coat closet that the tree was hiding.

Here is the beloved tree. Now you really can't see any candy canes on it but it could be the picture or more than likely I had eaten them all at this point. One of my Christmas weaknesses.

The day we finally took the tree out. We hadn't watered it for like a month or two and as you can see, it really doesn't look as bad as you would have thought.
We got the funniest look from one of the other tenants when she saw us taking out our Christmas tree in March. We almost felt like we needed to apologize to her for having a tree so late into the year.

Brad sad that we have to let it go. Actually, I think both of us were really ready to see it go but we still had to take a "sad" picture.

Finally, a Break.

I know there has been many of you that have been tempted to leave my blog in the dust thinking that I would NEVER write on it again. In fact, I am one of those people. BUT, due to the pestering...oh I mean encouragement, that some of my most faithful readers have given me, I am going to take another stab at informing you all of my every move. I think the problem is that I am far too humble of a person to really get too involved in something other than feeding the hungry or healing the sick. In fact, after reading my scriptures and praying for hours and serving everyone around me, I hardly have any time left over in the day. And usually what I do with that spare time is I read to sick children in the hospital and donate huge amounts of cold hard cash to a charity for old persons needing diapers. HA! just kidding. But both Brad and I have been very busy this last semester. That last semester will go down in history for the semester where I would sit at our kitchen table from 12:30 in the afternoon to about 10:00 or 11:00pm doing nothing but homework and still not be done when I would finally give in to my carnal woman and go to sleep. While Brad didn't have quite that amount of homework, he was holding down a good job and taking some really hard classes. He did wonderful and even made time to help me with my chemistry. (Chemistry is one of those classes that takes all of the things I am no good at and I hate in academics and puts it into one nice neat little package. Needless to say, Brad helped me quite a bit). It really was one of the longest, hardest and most time consuming semesters of my life but it all turned out well. Now, on to my last semester. But during this all consuming semester, Brad and I got to do some really fun things.