Laurie assembled leftover greens, birds and pinecones into a beautiful centerpiece

In the thirty-three and a half years Laurie and I have been married, we have never had a "traditional" cut or synthetic Christmas tree. We did get one of those tiny, pre-decorated live trees that we planted after Christmas a couple of different years — those trees were as close to traditional trees as we ever had. We usually decorate a house plant or indoor tree. For years we had a pot with 5 Norfolk Pine trees that looked like one bushy tree that we decorated year after year until it outgrew the house; we finally gave it to a friend with an atrium. For the past 10 years or so we have decorated our big, gnarly bonsai ficus, which makes a rather nice Christmas tree.

Spunk and Sasha helping take decorations out of the box

Laurie looking festive in the outfit she wore to the Medieval Studies holiday bash. 

Holiday cheer with candy canes, cookie cutters and sparkly nails.

Laurie preparing for a holiday run in the pre-white Christmas snow.

Sasha peeking around the corner to see where Christmas is. This is her first Christmas and she's excited.

An abstract photo of our gnarly bonsai that we decorate for the holidays

Birds waiting to be put in the tree

Sasha checking out the lights, balls, butterflies and birds on our gnarly bonsai

Since we rarely get snow in the Albuquerque area, Santa leaves the reindeer up north and drives a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere.