English Christmas tree

While Abby napped on Sunday, Kate and I took the opportunity to visit our local garden shop and pick out a tree. We'd missed having one last year, being homeless and all in the transition from Minny to London, and Kate was so excited that we bought the very first tree we looked at - the gentleman at Rassell's said we were by far the easiest and quickest customers they'd had in weeks. Kate and I carried it home in its netting (we stopped for only one rest in the roughly four block walk) and after getting it upstairs, you can see that she wasted no time in cutting off the wrapping.That necessitated some serious clean up after the fact, which she was only too happy to do - in fact, the most remarkable thing to me about the entire afternoon was just how excited both girls were to help decorate the tree. I guess I am getting older, because I didn't remember exactly how much I loved the whole process as a child until I saw Kate and Abby both spend the next two hours in a fever pitch of enthusiasm (sometimes scarily high as they danced across the living room with glass ornaments in hand and on the floor) as they worked. Immediately after standing it up and putting some water in, Kate and I hightailed it off to Homebase to pick up some new lights (voltage difference from US to UK too much for our expensively transported old light ropes) and then all of us
added on our usual trimmings, including lots of glass and ball gifts from the grandmothers plus many creations by the girls, which you will mostly have to imagine in looking at the below - they are there, believe it.