The Search for Lumpiness

Last year we had our encounter with Lumpy Tree and her hideous gift of spiders on Christmas Day. Here is the tale of finding Lumpy Tree last year, and here is the tale of Lumpy's creepy crawly gift. And here is a picture of the original Lumpy Tree.

Here are the ways I aptly described last year's original Lumpy:

·         A hairball that a large pine tree puked out, that then grew a stump and stuck around

·         Two trees that fell in love, started growing together as one and then got in a giant fight but couldn't quite separate again

·         Twin trees, where one was always bigger and stronger and eventually ate the smaller one

·         A tree that grew close to a nuclear facility

Well this year we went out in search of Lumpy II. The thing is, we ended up at a tree farm (the one Lumpy came from was closed) on a weekday when they only allow cut-your-own trees on weekends. We were determined to find Lumpy II and find her that day. This year we went with Aunt Julie, Uncle John, and their tiny new baby Clara. It was Teddy's first tree and we decided to get it on a snow day last week when Brian was out of school. So I bundled him up in layers and took him out.

Baby boy leggings: just say yes

The woman at the tree stand said we could walk around the lot behind the already-cut trees. It was a lot that hadn't yielded Christmas trees for around twenty years. Sounds cool, we thought. Kind of like trekking through an Idaho forest looking for a tree, which is a fun childhood memory for me.

Turns out it's harder to find a lumpy tree amongst a bunch of really crappy trees than it is to find a lumpy tree amongst perfect triangle Christmas trees. We ended up trying to find the tree that most resembled a normal Christmas tree. I think that, considering the options, we did a pretty good job. We trudged along in the wet snow for about 45 minutes before we settled on our tree. Ultimately we left it up to the boys, who claimed that Lumpy II was, "so beautiful." But I think it's more Spindly Tree or Tipping Tree than another Lumpy Tree. It's tilty and spazzy. It looks like it's about to tip over, when it in fact the tree stand proves that it is not. Its branches shoot off in random directions and its needles are as sharp as knives. Not only was I inwardly grimacing that I didn't get a perfect, suburban mom triangle tree (even though I had consented to find a lump again) as I decorated it, but I was physically grimacing from the pain caused by wrestling the ornaments over the limbs.

It also took us a couple days to get around to decorating her because of several Christmas light catastrophes that I don't care to get in to. So, here she is: the photo story of the lovely Tipping Tree.

One of the stellar options "rainbow tree!"

But Teddy doesn't approve

Beautiful ice on the walk in the wild

Calvin declares this is the one!

We're committed now.

Good view of the tipping-ness

 Asymmetrical is the new symmetrical.

I feel like this really shows the girth well.

To four year-olds, and even a 5 month-old, it's beauty...
and I suppose that's what matters.