A Christmas Tree for the Brady's

Christmas trees are important to all people who celebrate the season, right?  It is for me.  I'm not a fanatic and put the tree up before Thanksgiving.  In fact, I like it up for just a couple of weeks.  Geoff would prefer to not have one at all.  Well, he would prefer to just skip Christmas- I think.  He is a scrooge.
So at the beginning of  December the stores here in La Serena put out their Christmas trees and all the trimmings.  Christmas is not nearly as big a deal here as it is in the US.  The commercialization is under control.  Kindof refreshing, actually.  I spotted the tree I would like to have and looked forward to getting one and buying some decorations to put around the house.  I was getting excited.
I mentioned  to Geoff a couple of times that it was time to buy a tree.  It was the first week of December.  We still had one more move to make before we were in more permanent housing.  He convinced me, or rather I let him convince me to wait to buy a tree until after Dec 15th.  That is when we moved to permanent housing.
What we didn't know was that all the stores take down the Christmas displays about a week and a half before Christmas!!!  By the time we went Christmas tree shopping THERE WERE NONE!!!  I'm not kidding!!!  We couldn't find anything and we visited SEVERAL stores.
Geoff was in trouble!  After several stores we found a tree and some decorations.  They were all on clearance and the pickings were slim but I was glad to have found something.
Geoff took a photo of the tree.  After taking the photo he said something like..."look Gringa! (my nickname) You have a huge tree!"  Then he took the next photo.

The good thing about a small tree is that you can't fit very many presents under it!!!  It was nice to focus on other things besides presents this year.  We had a wonderful Christmas time with my parents.  That post will come soon!

It could have been worse!  Here is a soda can Christmas tree we found in Vicuña.  Even the star on top is made of soda cans.