Just like grandma and grandpa's

When I was a child, the whole family, aunts, uncles, cousins, would gather at my grandparent's huge Victorian home on Christmas Eve. With the exception of when I was raising my children, those are my fondest memories of the holidays. Grandma and Grandpa always had the biggest tree I had ever seen. Their home had at least 12 foot ceilings, if not higher, and that tree always looked so majestic to me as it touched the ceiling in the living room. I am sure grandpa had to use a ladder to decorate it. He always loved making us kids popcorn balls, and we thought the extra special treat was having hot cocoa with the marshmallows on top and a candy cane to stir it all with. One of my aunts would play Christmas carols on grandma's old piano, and we all would join in, but of course, us kids always begged her to keep playing as we would sing "up on the rooftop, reindeer pause, out jumps good ol' Santa Claus"....over and over and over, I'm sure the adults got sick of it! It was such a magical time for me, but it all seemed to come to an abrupt halt when my dad passed away just before Christmas, when I was 14. It was never the same again, and the entire family just seemed to drift apart. I continued to make sure I visited grandma and grandpa each Christmas though, until they passed away when I was in my early twenties. Now that I have grandchildren, I want to bring that same Christmas happiness and love into their young lives. I want them to be able to sit around a huge Christmas tree and look up at it and hopefully be in awe of it the same way I was at my grandparent's house. I want them to have the same memories of the love of all of their family, and to have the same teachings of the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Having said all that, Scooter and I set out on a mission this past Saturday to find THE perfect tree for our grandchildren. After going back and forth with fresh cut versus a "green" tree, we finally ended up at a specialty store in our area and buying one size smaller "lifelike" tree than what they had. The tallest, biggest tree they carry is a 14 ft., and unless we wanted to put it smack dab in the middle of our living room floor, we had to go with the 9 1/2 ft. Alaska fir tree. I love this tree! It is massive and it meant moving furniture completely out of the living room into the garage, but it's only temporary. We don't even have enough ornaments to hang on it, so I'm going shopping today for some that are more in scale with the size of the tree.

Scooter and I also celebrated our one year wedding anniversary yesterday. We wanted to keep it low key and just spend the whole day together. We had to run back over to the store where we bought our tree to pick up a piece of my car we left there when it was being loaded. We had to get a smog test done on our sports car, which is a hatchback, and not realizing we would be actually buying a tree at this store, it meant we had to put the seats down and take the deck cover out to load the two big boxes it came in. We left and forgot to have the guy put the deck cover back in my car. Had we known we were actually going to buy right then and there, we would've taken my SUV. It all worked out nicely. The manager was so kind about it and insisted we pick out any ornament in the store for having to come back over. They have our business from now on! Really nice people that care!!! After that, Scooter took me to a very nice restaurant, the same one our first date was at, and we sat in the same secluded, cozy booth as that first night. We came back home to do a little more decorating in the house, and then sit and snuggle up with a glass of wine.

Today is Scooter's birthday, and he wants no fanfare, but he will get a nice dinner and some TLC. He works so hard for our family and deserves some proper pampering!

Not too much knitting, but what knitting is getting done, is working up pretty fast. I've completed one legwarmer of a set I'm making for my daughter, and now all I have to do is bind off on the first one. I get to learn a new technique I've never done before, a sewn bind off. I watched a video of how it's done on you tube, and it looks easy, so I'm eager to try it. I'm also a half sock away from having Scooter's socks done, and he's going to be very happy when that happens. He asks me everyday if I got them done. It will happen, I promise!