A Tale of 4 Christmas Trees

Well it’s 5:45 am and I’ve been awake for an hour- so I decided to just get up. In fact- I just took my new med (CBD oil) and waiting for it to do it’s thing (for nausea) so I can hopefully not take as much of the med that makes me wake up so early!

I am soooooo thankful for modern medicine- especially the anti-nausea meds we have now- but as good as one of of them is- it makes me restless and feeling like I’m hyped up on caffeine. It seems to be cumulative so by day 4 I start to get a little agitated and it starts to make me wake up around 4-5am. Hopefully the CBD oil will work just as good with no side effects!

ANYWAY. I thought I’d share some pics of our Christmas- except I realized on actual Christmas Day- I took almost no pictures. In fact- I only really took ONE of Justin’s mom and her 6 grandchildren. That was it.

But I did take pics of us decorating our free Christmas tree (yes- free!) and of our annual gingerbread competition. I realized I didn’t tell the story about our free tree…

Soooooo Christmas is my FAVORITE time of year- especially the tree part. We usually go the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving and cut down our own tree- it’s our tradition that I LOVE and look forward to every year.

But, this is 2019- so that wasn’t happening.

Given the timing of our move to the new house- getting a live tree didn’t make sense until we were moved in (a few days before Christmas). So I did something I never thought I’d do- and I bought a fake tree on Amazon. The plan was to use the fake tree at the old house- then use it on the front porch of the new house- and get a real one for the inside of the new house once we moved in.

This ended up being a fantastic idea and I actually LOVE the fake tree. I bought a box of cheep ornaments from Target and the kids made a bunch of ornaments and snowflakes to hang on it- and if you remember from an earlier post Esella even made a star-angel for the top.

Once we were in the new place- we finally got out to the Home Depot to grab whatever they had left (it wasn’t much, BTW). We had waited to avoid rain BUT since it IS 2019, after all, it ended up POURING rain the whole time we were trying to find a tree anyway. We finally found “the one” so I took our traditional picture and then took the kids (and my camera!) to the car to dry out.

Justin gets in the car after having put the tree on the roof and tells me- the staff wouldn’t let him pay for it. They insisted we take it because we had been in the rain, drenched.

So that is the story of how we got our tree for free.

So that is two trees…

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

We actually have FOUR trees this year.

Yes, four.

So on the day we got our real tree- Emory really wanted a “blue” tree. That is- he wanted a tree tinged with blue. Last year he also wanted a blue tree and we didn’t get one so we told him we’d try to find one. Well, the tree we ended up with wasn’t very blue and he was VERY upset. We are talking tears, people.

When he was calm- I told him I was fairly positive Whole Foods had mini trees that were more blue and that I’d be happy to buy him one. He was delighted with this- so in the POURING RAIN we continued on to Whole Foods to get my kid a blue tree.

And we did. We got Emory his very own mini LIVE tree with a hint of blue.

He.Was.Thrilled.

And the 4th tree? Well the 4th has a special story too. Edda had been attending a fantastic preschool prior to my diagnosis (Emory went there for 2 years as well). Unfortunately it’s a co-op preschool and we needed to pull her out because the co-op part just wasn’t possible with everything we have going on. However- even though we were no longer officially enrolled- Valley Parent Preschool families gave us an AMAZING gift of a gift-card tree- covered with gift cards to restaurants we can eat safely at during my treatment- as well as Visa cards to help with gas and expenses related to cancer/chemo.

As I’m writing this- I am brought to tears. Admittedly- I have barely cried since I started treatment. I just don’t have time for that. The ONLY reasons for any tears have been tears from the overwhelm of gratitude of others. VPP gave us over $1000 in gift cards to help support our family and we are just eternally grateful.

And that is tree #4. You can see trees 3 & 4 here in our family picture:

That’s the tale of our four Christmas Trees for 2019- one of the few positive tales from this year. I just realized that it is New Years EVE! Oh my goodness people I am so excited to bring in 2020 tonight. In fact- I’ve never been more excited for a New Years ever.

May 2020 bring you all love, peace, light, health, and happiness!

Love- The Yehs