Chloe texted me during chorus rehearsal last night to tell me we’d gotten the call from the Marlborough Historical Society that we won a Christmas tree, one of the 41 decorated trees they were raffling off in their annual Festival of Trees that we visited on Sunday. We can’t remember exactly what this one looked like, apparently it has a lot of gold ornaments on it, we should be picking it up in a day or two.

This will go nicely with the tree we won at last year’s festival, when there were a lot less trees and a lot fewer people. It was Chloe’s name on the ticket in both cases, so technically she’s the winner, and now two for two. Last Christmas we were going to be traveling so we’d already figured on not buying a real tree, and then ended up winning what I thought was the best one, which came not only completely decorated but with a bottle of wine and a couple of other non-tree items. While I still prefer real trees – with the piney smell and the tradition and needles all over the floor and trying to be good about filling up the base with water but it dies within a couple of days anyway – you can’t argue with success. If Chloe was old enough, she should buy a lottery ticket.