The Alan Family Christmas

Christmas Vacation is one of my all time favorite Christmas movies. I empathize with Clark, always wanting to do the right thing, always trying hard, having the best of intentions, and then having everything generally go to sh*# right in front of your eyes. So I am always laughing when we have a "Griswoldian moment" around the holidays (to be fair, my lovely wife causes about 50% of these, so it's not all me).

So it was with great expectations for humor that we bundled up in the snow on Sunday and went out and found the "Alan Family Christmas Tree". Normally we end up driving around town (against my Bah-Humbug wishes) while we visit every carol-singer infested, mulled cider having, little mom and pop Christmas tree lot in town trying to find a tree. To my greater and greater level of frustration, we are usually unable to find the "perfect tree". This continues for a couple of hours or until we pass the first Home Depot, where (for the last 10 years) I pull in and find a perfect tree in about 10 minutes and bring it home. This year we made a deal, wifey could go out in advance and find one little tree lot that had a lot of "perfect trees" and we would hit that one lot. If they didn't have a tree that we liked, it was immediately off to Home Depot.

So the lot she found was literally down at the bottom of our hill, it was out of some guys garage and they had a nice fire going and plenty of great trees. So we got our tree there (no trip to Home Depot....awwww). Now, Marisa wanted a nice big tree, and I just wanted to get home, so we picked out a good one that in true Griswold fashion was about a foot too tall for our house. So after I cut off a big chunk of tree and a bunch of branches, we were good to go.

So our tree is up and decorated. It was Jake's year to put the angel up and it won't be long until he's big enough to do it without my help (again....awwwww). We had our traditional tree-setting-up dinner of pigs in a blanket, potato skins and salami and cheese. We listened to Christmas songs, the elves danced a little (as you can see). And the Christmas Spirit is alive and well at the Alan household. Now, somebody please show up in Cousin Eddies' RV for Christmas and I can die a happy man.......