Mike decided that this year, we'd get a 'real' Christmas tree. I had always had artificial ones before, so this is something completely new for me. I had hoped to get our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving- but that didn't happen because of a death in the family. I had hoped for the following weekend, but because of that death in the family, I ended up snowed in in Oklahoma. I again hoped for the weekend after that, but we decided to wait (I don't remember why at the moment).
So- finally, FINALLY, we were headed to Menards to get our Christmas tree. I don't know if Menards is a national chain or not (is it?), but just in case- it's a home improvement/hardware store. A new one opened up not far from here in October. This place is huge. It's like man heaven. Or maybe man hell, because I saw the fence that I want, and light fixtures that are to die for, and closet organizers (I could use a couple of those), and Christmas decorations (they have a giant inflatable peppermint arch! Dylan shouted 'I want that!' when he saw it and it was all I could do to remember that I'm an adult woman and screaming 'ME TOO!' in the middle of a store is unbecoming).
So. We walk into Menards and the boys' jaws just drop. Oh, I can just see the little gears working in their little heads! Cody- the child whose first real word was 'LIGHT!', which was repeated over and over and over, either with finger pointed towards the light or hands flipping the switch off and on- he spotted the lights first. Dylan saw the inflatables, and Evan pointed out all the gloves on display. For them- Menards is a little boy's idea of heaven.
Mike's reaction was pretty much the same, which doesn't really surprise me.
We head off for the Garden Center (after I steer Mike in the right direction, he was drawn to the lights like a moth to a flame, I swear), I made Mike stop when I realized that we had lost one of our members (to the gloves, of all things). On the way, we passed the toys (had to steer the boys away from those), saw more inflatables, steered Mike away from the timers (for his fish tank, so that he doesn't have to reach down and flip a switch to turn the light on), noticed the sheer abundance of chocolate at the register (ya know, for the husbands to give to their wives when they spend too much money at Menards), and looked at the stuff used for shelving (I'm female- don't ask me what it's called because I don't know), and finally- we reached the Garden Center.
Those doors opened, and the boys were in heaven. Trees! Christmas trees! Everywhere! We looked at them all, felt the needles, decided that we want the biggest one, even if it won't fit in our house and we have to cut the top off, no, we want that one, with the brown needles (yeah, I vetoed that one quickly), oh, look, if you shake the branches just right on this one the needles fall off (another veto), and so on. We looked at them all, Dylan voting for the ones with the netting still on, Cody wanting the biggest one, and Evan nearly speechless by all the trees. Finally, we narrowed it down to two white pine trees. We had the boys vote- Cody picked one, Dylan picked the other, and Evan was the tiebreaker.
At which point we realized that we needed a tree skirt and lights, so we went back into the store. When we reached the automatic door leading into the store, Dylan threw his arms out and said 'Open Says Me!' That was the end of them being cute- and the beginning of them being little terrors.
It was like a free for all! I do not recommend going to Menards when the estrogen is outnumbered by the testosterone 5 to 1. Our $13 Christmas tree ended up costing us a whooping $90. We had the tree skirt, the lights (3 sets of LED lights, which apparently are all the rage among 27 year old men), two ornaments (those were my fault- they're for Cody's teachers), a handsaw (because I don't let my husband near a hardware store often enough for him to have a handsaw already, even though I'm pretty sure that there's one in the garage that belongs to my dad), and a timer (for the fishtank).
We got home, got the tree up, and now when you walk by, my living room smells pine fresh.
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