Trees Cost How Much?!?

Well, both kids are still a bit under the weather. Quinn seems to be okay, but has some rash or something on his face, so he's obviously not completely better. Catherine was coughing some this morning, but seemed better once she was up and around for a bit. All that meant there was no way they were going to church. Ginger still had to go to church though since she had nursery duty (heh, I said duty) and Grammy (our babysitter for the party from last night) left early to get home before noon. Once Ginger got back home and we had some lunch, we headed out and bought a Christmas tree. I know I complained about tree prices last year, but this year we decided to wait until they went on sale (30% off). And somehow, our tree still cost more than it did last year. Prices on trees are absolutely nuts. I know I'm entering "grumpy old man" territory by going down this path, but I have fond memories of getting a tree back when I was a youngster and only paying about $12 to $15 for it.

The weather was unbelievable for mid December. You could walk around without a coat or anything. Once we were at the lot, the kids went nuts running through the trees. Catherine was just precious as almost every tree she saw she would say "Let's get this tree. It's perfect." Meanwhile after about 20 minutes of looking around Quinn was saying "Let's just buy a tree and go home." I think part of that is simply because even though Quinn doesn't really appear to be sick, he's still in recovery mode and tends to not have as much patience as he normally does when he's not feeling 100 percent (not that he has a lot of patience normally).

Anyway, I have lots and lots of pictures of the events, so why don't I just let those tell the story.
























And I'm sure Ginger's tired of hearing me gripe about it, but look at all the ornaments on the tree! That's only about a little more than half the ornaments we had to put up. We still have a ton more than need to go on the tree. And it doesn't help that every year we buy more. I'm a big part of the problem though since I tend to buy a fair number of ornaments at Hallmark after Christmas when they're 50 to 75 percent off.