New Homes - A welcome and a goodbye.

For the first time ever, we have a our very own Christmas tree in our house. It only took 13 years! Mr. Field Notes ventured off to the great white north (er, south that is) with a buddy from work and brought us home a tree - a gorgeous Douglas fir.

Friendly fir, spiky spruce.

By its ring count, it made it about 20 years before heading off to its new home, in our dining room.

Miss Newfoundland looks very proud of her new tree, doesn't she? Crazy green eyed monsterish expression! Both dogs have been very well behaved around the tree, but just in case we bought a stand that is supposed to resist tipping. So far so good.

Keeping with tradition, we hung our collection of ornaments. My favorite is a cross-stitched lion in a red plastic frame.

Beneath the lion is the embroidered name "Leo," the name of my beloved childhood stuffed lion. My little sister made the ornament for me when she was about 10. She embroidered it herself and carefully taped the edges of the cloth into the frame. It's rag tag now, but I've kept it over the years and hung it on a variety of plants and miniature trees over the years at this time of year.

One year during Senior Spaniel's early unwrapping of Christmas presents destined for others, he got into the box of ornaments and altered the precious lion one. That's a nice way of putting it. Oh what a wretched curr he has been! You'd never believe this is the same dog who last night slept peacefully under the tree without a thought in his mind of further altering the ornaments that hung just above his noggin - including the lion ornament that bears the mark of his sometimes ferocious little mouth.

I'd rather plants trees than cut them down, so I feel good about having planted 4 plum trees, a maple tree, and a catalpa tree this year to make up for cutting this one down. The trees are all still alive, at least they appear to be. And, two of the ten trees I planted the year before are still alive.

Although we said hello to a tree this week, we also said goodbye to "Gorilla, the Non-Monkey Sock Monkey." She's in a box now, packaged up in a dark corner of the post office waiting to be put on a truck to travel to ScienceWoman! I snapped a pic of her with Russ, the Non-Sock Sock Monkey before she got bundled up to leave.

I sewed a new Gorilla this weekend; I think the profile turned out really well and I even got the front limbs to resemble what gorillas look like when "knuckle-walking." The blue-faced golden snub-nosed langur I've been working on is also done. Trouble is, that little wart-lipped rascal didn't make into the box destined for a new home in CA with my niece... oops. Miss PiPi will have to wait for the next shipment!