I was awakened by the sound of Christmas carols blaring from downstairs. I ran my hand through my hair to get it out of my eyes and I looked at the alarm clock on my nightstand it said 7:00 AM and no matter how many times I blinked my eyes the time did not change and the music did not go away, so I drug myself from my bed and slipped on my fuzzy purple house shoes and stumbled down the stairs to locate some caffeine and possibly strangle the person responsible for the music at this ungodly hour. As I reached the bottom of the steps I peeked into the living room, where the music was coming from and what I saw was simply a shock. The whole living room looked as though a Christmas decorating shop had exploded in there. There were boxes and decorations everywhere, I had never seen so much Christmas stuff in one house before. I noticed Joy dancing around in a corner of the room while she was unpacking boxes. "Hey sleepyhead", Carl said as he came up behind me with what looked like more boxes of Christmas stuff. I jumped and replied, "You scared me," "what is with all this stuff, did Santa come early?" I said while trying not to giggle. "yeah something like that, every year Joy buys more and more she absolutely loves Christmas and decorating. Believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet, just wait till she gets done", he said with a smile as he carried the boxes into the living room. Joy squealed with delight when she saw the boxes, she looked just like a little kid on Christmas morning opening a new toy. She looked up and saw me still standing in the doorway and she motioned for me to come over. "Good morning isn't this awesome I can't wait to unpack all of my decorations and get this place lit up like a winter wonderland", she exclaimed. I couldn't help but, smile back at her and get a little excited myself at the thought of decorating. A part of me was a little sad because it was my first Christmas without my Mom and my baby girl, but I quickly pushed those thoughts aside because I did not want to ruin Joy's moment. "Good morning, I am going to go grab a cup of coffee real quick, would you like me to get you one too?" I said. "Yeah that sounds good", she replied. "Hey Carl would you like me to grab you a cup of coffee too?" I yelled over the blaring Christmas carols. "I'm good, I have already had three and I think I am going to start bouncing off the walls any minute", he replied with a chuckle. I laughed and turned to wade my way through the sea of decorations and into the kitchen. I quickly grabbed two Christmas mugs and filled them with coffee and then added some cinnamon coffee creamer to each cup. I headed back to the living room with both steaming mugs of coffee, being careful as not to trip over any decorations on my way to Joy. "Thanks", she replied as I handed her her coffee. "So what do you need me to do", I asked as we both sipped on our coffee. "Well the plans are to get all of the house to look like a winter wonderland", she said with a smile. "Awesome, but I don't see a tree, is it in one of these boxes"? I said looking around. Joy laughed as she replied, "Oh no I don't do the fake plastic tree thing, we only use a real tree in my house, we will be leaving in one hour to go pick and cut down our Christmas tree, so you better go get dressed if you are going to be ready in time". Wow, we had never had a real Christmas tree before because my mother always said that they were to messy and she didn't want the hassle of cleaning up the needles all the time, so we always had a fake tree. "Alrighty then I will go get dressed because I definitely do not want to miss this, I have never had a real tree before", I told her as I turned to head back to my room to get dressed. Minutes later I was dressed in jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt that had snowmen on it and I had put on my hiking boots, and then I rushed down the steps because I was so excited. We spent the next three hours looking for what Joy called the perfect Christmas tree. In the end we found the most gorgeous seven foot fir tree, it was so full and so green and it looked perfect in the corner of the living room in front of the big bay windows all lit up. That night as I drifted off to sleep I couldn't help but let my thoughts wonder to the last Christmas that I had had with my Mom and my Dad.
