Tis' the season and time to put up a Christmas tree. Having left our pathetic cheap plastic tree in Abu Dhabi, we were excited to have a real tree again after 6 years. Now I just had to find out where to find one.
I looked online and saw that IKEA sells trees, but somehow, that just didn't seem the right way to go. I was really hoping for a cut your own farm since we used to live down the road from one in the US and really enjoyed cutting our own, but there didn't seem to be anything like that close so we ended up at a large tree lot about 10 minutes away. And I mean large. A collection of tree lots actually all congregated in this same area. Kind of like how car dealerships seems to collect next to one another.
Selection was different from back home. There were 4 different kinds of trees, but all short needles. Fraiser fir, which seems to sell for a premium in the US was one of the cheaper kinds here. We ended up with a 6 ft. Nordmann Fir (locally grown). Into the back of the car and off we went to decorate.
When we moved to UAE, I had left our collection of ornaments behind as I wasn't sure whether it would be okay to celebrate Christmas in a Muslim country. By the time I realised it would be just fine, the ornaments were packed too far back in our storage locker back in the US to dig out. So, one of the best parts of this year's tree was unpacking all of our ornaments from storage.
And what about those cats? Petra (our kitty from Abu Dhabi) is experiencing a real tree for the first time and after a few exploratory walks underneath and a sniff or two, she isn't really that interested. Rogue (WI born), on the other hand, is very familiar with torturing real trees and has been happily getting reacquainted with the practice.
The good news is she doesn't climb the tree, just likes to walk under it, sit under it watching the lights, and bat the low hanging ornaments once in a while.
I looked online and saw that IKEA sells trees, but somehow, that just didn't seem the right way to go. I was really hoping for a cut your own farm since we used to live down the road from one in the US and really enjoyed cutting our own, but there didn't seem to be anything like that close so we ended up at a large tree lot about 10 minutes away. And I mean large. A collection of tree lots actually all congregated in this same area. Kind of like how car dealerships seems to collect next to one another.
Selection was different from back home. There were 4 different kinds of trees, but all short needles. Fraiser fir, which seems to sell for a premium in the US was one of the cheaper kinds here. We ended up with a 6 ft. Nordmann Fir (locally grown). Into the back of the car and off we went to decorate.
When we moved to UAE, I had left our collection of ornaments behind as I wasn't sure whether it would be okay to celebrate Christmas in a Muslim country. By the time I realised it would be just fine, the ornaments were packed too far back in our storage locker back in the US to dig out. So, one of the best parts of this year's tree was unpacking all of our ornaments from storage.
And what about those cats? Petra (our kitty from Abu Dhabi) is experiencing a real tree for the first time and after a few exploratory walks underneath and a sniff or two, she isn't really that interested. Rogue (WI born), on the other hand, is very familiar with torturing real trees and has been happily getting reacquainted with the practice.
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| I'm just looking . . . I promise. |
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