8 more weeks!

Can you believe it?? I only have 8 more weeks (10 if she decides to be stubborn and come late - but we're just going to pretend that she's going to be on time.) We took some bump + Christmas tree pictures the other night, but I hated all of them, so I'm not sharing! *laughs* I'll see how I feel tonight and maybe I'll get at least one decent one to share. :)

We had a blast getting the tree though. I had promised Mark that I would at least consider a fake tree this year, but all the trees we could find were horrible. Either incredibly sparse, metallic red or silver, or tiny. Suffice to say, as soon as we walked out into the garden centre at B&Q I was goner and only a real tree would do.

B&Q have developed a new and confusing system whereby they pre-bag all their Christmas trees. I'm not sure how they expect us to choose the perfect tree when they're all already wrapped up. So Mark and I set about unwrapping trees. We didn't have anything sharp so it was a slightly complicated process. We tried using the car key, but it didn't seem to help much. Eventually we found the perfect tree. It was listed as a 5ft tree but was obviously at least 6ft (which made Mark happy. His tree philosophy is that "you should always have to look up to your tree.") I think it makes him remember Christmas from a child's point of view. :)

Having found our tree it was now time to re-wrap it. The store had signs everywhere promoting their amazing "Bag and carry to car" tree service, however we couldn't find a single employee anywhere so we decided to re-bag it ourselves. So here goes - heavily pregnant lady and husband attempting to shove a 6ft tree through a bagger contraption. So far so good; until I forgot to twist the netting around the stump. Oops. Tree only half bagged! At least the staff had left their sharp cutting tools laying around where anyone could get to them, so we were able to cut the netting at the top. 2nd take- shove tree again, this time remember to twist netting. Success! One bagged tree! Now, how to get it to the checkout. Still no staff. Oh well. Mark throws it over he shoulder (so to speak) and we head to the checkout. Self-checkout? Sure, why not. Helpfully they have the handheld barcode scanners so we can get to the label through the netting.(I was worried we were going to have to un-net the tree to get a good scan of the label.) Beep! All good. Then the little automated voice perks up and says "Please place item on the scale." Pregnant lady laughs. They expect us to do what with the tree? My crazy laughter finally attracts a sales assistant who proceeds to correct the error in judgment made by the machine and we're done. Just need to wedge it into the car. Success. I can't say they impressed me with their superior bag and carry to car tree service this year. :D But we had fun anyway. Last year at some point Mark and I saw a saw on sale and decided to be adults and buy it. (In the past we've been known, come January, to hack an old Christmas tree into manageable pieces with a swiss army knife.) Our shiny new saw came in very handy this year. In December no less! Mark sawed off the bottom of the tree so it was actually level... meaning, it took about an hour less to get the tree to stand up straight than in previous years. (Look we can learn!)

Okay, so not a very baby-centric blog post today, but I felt like sharing our tree story. I promise I'll do my very best to take a bump shot tonight and insert it into the post to make it more babyish. :) Merry Christmas everyone!!