Dusty The Sandman: Part 2

As I sit down Lauren hands me the
letters that she had drawn and we searched the table for one of the
two pairs of scissors that continuously evaded our sight the entire
night. After a minute or two of searching, Ashley finds them and I
get to cutting out the second “R” in MERRY. Lauren, AKA Lil’
Sparkle, is ever so glad to move on from the letters to the pinecones
(which they found somewhere in the wilderness of Israel). I look up
from my careful cutting every now and again to see Lauren gleefully
applying glitter (that we swiped from the other teams’ dwelling) to
the pinecones.

Casey starts hanging the banner. He
finds the red M, the green E, the red R and then he needs the green R
that I am cutting. I hurry along and get it cut out. We get all the
letters hung. Debate about whether or not we can leave the green R
backwards as Casey hung it or if it needs to be straight. We decide
that backward goes better with our Charlie Brown Christmas in Israel
motif and leave it as is. Good job Casey. (You may or may not be able
to find information about this incident in Ashley’s grief journal.)

We are all singing songs and having a
great time decorating and Casey and Erin duck into their room and all
the sudden we see them come out clad in jackets and hats and gloves.
They are going to get our tree! We have been planning and talking
about this tree that we are going to get all evening. I don’t know
what they will be able to find, but they head out into the Israeli
wilderness (that means desert) to see what was available.

We continue our decorations. I take
over for Casey on the ladder hanging up pine cones and snow flakes.
Lauren and Ashley discuss and begin execution of their vision of
transforming the art in our common area into Santa and Mrs. Clause.
The most tricky part of that is the legs for Santa. Lauren being the
artist that she is develops the idea and runs with it creating from
poster board an entire suit and dress for the oh so joyful couple
hanging on our wall in Israel. Ashley begins working on ornaments for
our coming tree and begin stringing popcorn.

Suddenly we hear laughing and giggling
and know that Erin and Casey are back. Casey pops just his head in
the door and tells us to go to our rooms so they can bring the tree
in. We do and we wait in great anticipation of the moment we get to
come back out. Finally, they call us back out and we find the tree.
It is a glorious specimen of what a tree should be with green needles
and brown trunk and even a roundish shape. We celebrate the find and
begin looking around to find a place suitable for their find. We
decide upon one corner and that the tree needs to be trimmed a bit so
it will fit into our home. So they take it back outside trim it down
a little bit and figure out how to get this tree to stand on it’s
own. They use rocks (because we are in Israel) in an empty pot they
found and it works! We get it set up and it stands on its own. I
bring out my red blanket to serve as the skirt and we have a legit
Christmas tree.

I continue stringing popcorn until all
the thread is used up. Casey colors the ornaments and he and Ashley
begin to hang them on our tree. Lauren is still working hard on the
Santa and Mrs. Clause suits. By the way, just so you know the kind of
resourceful people I am in Israel with right now. We did not have any
cotton balls to apply to the hats and suits of the Clause couple so
Ashley went into the bathroom and brought out the toilet paper and
started crumpling up squares for the cuffs and tips of the suit.

We get that all finished up and look
adoringly at our creation for a while. Then we clean up the common
area and head to bed. I knew I would get to sleep some time today. Oh
wait that was not true it is nearly 1
a.m.. Oh well, Christmas decorations in Israel: totally worth it.