Crap. I'm turning into one of "them".

*sigh*

I don't know how it happened, to be honest.

I've always been the person who laughed at people who put their Christmas trees up early. Not that I waited until the last minute, but I'd usually wait until about a week before Christmas to get one.

I refuse to do anything Christmas-related until after Thanksgiving. I believe in dealing with one holiday at a time.

But tonight, the kids and I had to go to the grocery store (mistake) to get some stuff. I wouldn't have waited until today, but only having income once a month kind of dictates when I can do that. So we went.

And they had trees there. I scoffed when the kids asked if we were going to get one.

Then I looked at them. And they looked really good. And they weren't crispy-dead. I mean, they were really green and soft and fluffy. And the price wasn't too bad.

Ugh. Really?

In the meantime, Daniel was having a meltdown because all he wanted to do was get in the car cart and go shopping. People were staring at him as The Kid Who Never Throws A Tantrum totally lost it.

I did it. I grabbed the tag off of the tree, ran inside, paid for it, and ran back out to move the van up to the front of the store to load it in, still not quite sure how we were going to do that.

But we did it.

Had to do some minor surgery on the tree stand...

Trim some of the bottom branches off...

Tighten...

And voila.

That's 8'3" of wonderful smelling Christmas goodness right there. But, in order to avoid fully becoming one of "them" I refuse to decorate it until at least tomorrow night. Alex won't be back until evening, and then the older 3 are leaving Friday morning, so we'll at least start it tomorrow while they're all here.

Yes, I know it's a little lopsided on the bottom. It won't be by the time I'm done. Trust me.

I can't believe I have a tree already.