Fred Roger is here!

 Way back in the year 2007, Matt and I celebrated our first married Christmas together. Naturally, since we are not insane, that meant we wanted to purchase a (real, of course) Christmas tree that would bring some cheer to our living room. Unfortunately, at that particular juncture in our lives, we were what you might call poor. Like, we had enough money to pay our bills and eat...but that was about it. We budgeted every single paycheck down to the last penny. And somehow that budget did not include a Christmas tree (but it did include gifts, because as Dave Ramsey taught us-- Christmas comes every year! If you're going to participate in gift-giving-- plan for it! So we did. But we forgot to plan for the tree, which is incidentally kind of expensive for people who budget to the penny).

Luckily, we're determined and creative people and we were confident we could find a way to buy a tree that didn't involve taking money out of our savings account and/or begging our parents. We put on our thinking caps and then it happened: our eyes lit upon our spare change jar. 

Spare Change=Money. How much money? Who knows. Maybe enough for a tree? Maybe.

So we counted it.

And lo and behold-- it was enough!!! Over forty dollars!! We were ecstatic. I mean, let's face it: spare change doesn't feel like money. A bunch of pennies and dimes...yeah, on some level you know it's money, but it's just not the same as the money that comes on your paycheck every month. It's like rogue money. Unaccounted for money. Money that can buy a Christmas tree.

So that year we happily counted up and rolled our change and used it to buy our tree. And henceforth and forever more our spare change jar has been referred to as the Christmas Tree Fund. Now all those random pennies and dimes have a purpose! And it's weird because we really don't use cash all that much...so it really mystifies me how so much manages to accumulate. Maybe it's some kind of miracle. Maybe we throw in a penny and God does some water-to-wine action and in November we find a quarter in its place. I don't really know. But I do know that for the last seven years, we've funded our Christmas tree every single year out of our spare change. And we don't really have to anymore. Thankfully we have enough money now that we could just go buy a tree without really worrying about it. But now it's a tradition! On Christmas Tree Day we start with dumping out all the change and rolling it, hoping and praying it'll be at least $40 (the rough cost of the trees we like...which strangely haven't gotten any more expensive in seven years).

So on Saturday morning, that's what we did. The annual Counting of the Change.

This year's grand total: $60 rolled!! We stopped there and quit rolling pennies because seriously, enough is enough. Pennies are stupid. They can be our 'seed money' for next year's tree.

After Catching Fire (OMG amaaaaaazing!!!! I want to go back and see it again!!! Any Athens or Augusta-area takers??) we headed over to pick out our tree.

Yes, Matt picked out his lumberjack-y outfit all by himself and no, I don't think it was an accident. ;)

Tree shopping early in the season means we had way more choices, which isn't necessarily a good thing. Luckily we picked one before it came to violence and headed home with our prize.

Once home, I continued with my Christmas tradition of being a total control freak about the decorating. I guess I didn't make a lot of progress with that this year. Oh well, maybe next year. I got the tree decorated, but not without several minutes of crying because I was sad there was no baby 'helping' me decorate the tree this year. Apparently back when we were anticipating the adoption, I spent way too much time fantasizing about us trying to get a tree and decorate with the baby in tow...and then when it all happened and there was no baby to interfere with our Christmas decorating...well, I just got really sad. :(

But the tree is up, the mantel is decorated, and hopefully I will stop being sad at some point. Or at least not want to cry when I see our Christmas decorations.

The huge ornaments dangling off the mantel are a new addition for this year. Naturally, I got the idea from Pinterest. I posted the snapshot above on Instagram yesterday and by far the best part was the comments about people liking my 'big balls.' Heh heh.

Matt and I have a strange habit of greeting Lola and random inanimate objects in our house whenever we come home from being away somewhere. Obviously greeting Lola makes sense, since she's greeting us, too-- but I don't know if greeting other stuff is entirely normal. But that's us. I tend to greet whatever is most noticeable or new-- Hi Lola! Hi dirty dishes! Hi new rug! Hi gray walls! Something like that. So naturally we've been greeting the Christmas tree. Last night I decided that we should name the Christmas tree so that it would be more personal when we greet it...since it'll be with us at least a month, it seems like a name would be nice. So on the count of three we both blurted out our name choice for the tree: I said Fred, Matt said Roger. Fred and Roger. Fred Rogers-- you know, Mr. Rogers??! I mean, obviously we were on the same wavelength with names there. So we decided to go with a classic double name: Fred Roger. I left off the -s because in light of our recent grammar discussion, it just makes sense to not include an unnecessary and confusing plural name if you don't absolutely have to. So anyway. Now we've had fun greeting Fred Roger and treating him like another pet: as in Erika, did you water Fred Roger this morning? (No, oops...)

On a mostly unrelated note, Saturday night we went out for drinks at Highwire for my SIL Jess's birthday. What I got could probably be considered a 'gateway drink.' Like, if you aren't a big drinker (which I'm not) but you tried this, you might be in danger. 

It's called the Yuletide: hot chocolate, peppermint Schnapps, and whipped cream. And a sprig of fresh mint.

Dying of yumminess. And despite my lack of bartender skills, I feel confident I can recreate this one at home, so it seems that a trip to the package shop will be in my near future. Can you think of anything better than sipping a Yuletide in front of the fire, Fred Roger twinkling in the background, Parks & Rec marathoning on the TV? NO, I CANNOT. So anyway. 8 more hours til I can work on making that happen. Have a great Monday!