Bringing in the Christmas tree

Dave's mom & her man-friend cut down the tree for the local church every year, and cut one down for our home at the same time. Since these are straight from a forest, and not from a tree farm (Note: tree farms have space between the trees, so that the trees are equally bushy on all sides, unlike a forest, where trees tend to grow in groups or clumps, and you'll end up with a tree that has bushy growth on one side, but thin growth on the side that was pressed up against the other trees in the group), we usually end up with a kinda Charlie Brown sort of tree. But you can't beat the price! And it's still green, and smells wonderfully like the forest.

I read somewhere that it's a good idea to put your tree out a couple of days before you decorate it, so that your pets can get used to it being there, and hopefully by the time you decorate it, they will be ignoring it. Now, I haven't found that to be exactly true, but putting it out early does prevent scenes like the one below:

Not in the house for 5 minutes, and already we have Baby Boy batting at the tree (you can also see from this shot that the tree is kinda lopsided, and has a curve in the trunk. The ornaments will take care of that - once decorated, it won't really be noticable.) :D

A week till Christmas eve - woo hoo!