Monday night, I flew into Phoenix for work. I didn’t check luggage so I quickly got off the plane and took the bus to the car rental place. While waiting in line for a car, I realized that I forgotten to print directions to the hotel. I didn’t think it would be a problem because rental car places usually provide good directions.

Unfortunately, this car rental place didn’t have an automated terminal that allows you to print out directions. The woman at the counter gave me some directions and wrote them down on a piece a paper. However, when I left, I still wasn’t completely sure where I was going.

I jumped onto the highway and headed in what I thought was the right direction. After 15 or 20 minutes, I figured I had gone too far. I decided it was time to use one of my life lines, a call to Anna. Its always embarrassing to call Anna because I always tell her I never get lost—which is still true.

While chit chatting with the Anna, I saw one of those things that reinforced the fact that I am married to a Swede–IKEA. That’s right; the great, bright blue and yellow store was glowing off to the left. Here I was running around lost in Phoenix unable to find my hotel, but I could still find Ikea.

After making a really big circle, I eventually found the hotel. Though, the thought did come to my mind if I couldn’t find my hotel, it would probably cost the same amount of money to buy a new mattress and bed frame at Ikea as it would to pay for the hotel room. Then again, it would take me all night to assemble the Ikea bed frame. Go figure.

My family had a great Thanksgiving Day tradition in Cleveland. My parents would put the turkey in the oven by early afternoon and we’d head out to a Christmas tree farm on the west side of the city. We’d wandered around the farm for quite bit of time before picking the annual Christmas tree. Instead of cutting the tree down, we would dig it up. We’d put the tree into the van, roots and all, and took it home. We then moved the tree into the house and planted it into a box. It was a nice tradition on Thanksgiving day and it was nice to have a live Christmas tree.

The week before Thanksgiving, Anna and I bought a small potted-pine tree from the store. We’re planning on spending Christmas Day out of town with family, so we didn’t need a big tree. Maybe I’m just a Christmas tree-party pooper, but I thought the little tree would work well.

The day before Thanksgiving my parents brought us this really nice Christmas tree stand. I thought it was pretty cool, but the small pine tree wouldn’t fit into the base of stand. I thought “Well, we can just put the stand somewhere and put something else nice on it and that will be it.”

Saturday, my parents came back to Houston on their way home to Corpus. The first thing they brought into the door was this huge seven-foot box. My father had a big grin on his face and said he brought us a Christmas tree for our new stand. At first was I was pretty scared. Our apartment is already over flowing with stuff. Storing the box was going to be problematic let alone putting the tree up in our living room. Needless to say the Christmas tree stayed in the box until my parents left.

Anna slept most of the afternoon on Sunday so I decided to put the new Christmas tree up. After some finagling I got everything in place and was able to make enough space for it to look good in our apartment. The result can be seen below:

It’s nice to have the tree up. We put the small pine tree outside our front door and we now have the big Christmas tree up in our living room. The site definitely makes it feel more like the holidays.
- Bob