Wednesday afternoon as I was looking over weekly folders, helping Hannah with her homework, and other mundane Wednesday things, I heard a crash in the living room. I ran in to find the Christmas tree sprawled out across the floor and I couldn't find Jon Tyler. Momentary panic, 2 older kids crying, and one thought - NOT AGAIN (more to come on that). To relieve your nerves at this point, I did find Jon Tyler and he was not under the tree. He was just beside it and is small enough to be hidden by a rather large tree. I lifted it back up, and held it in place while I called Donnie to come home. He arrived very quickly and we discovered that the stand had broken beyond repair. I was devastated. My big, beautiful tree that I've had for seven year, I thought we'd have to get rid of it. Let me digress here to say that artificial really is the way to go. There is just something about being able to manuever the branches to hide the "holes". This comes from one too many trees that looked great at the tree farm only to have a major deformity when I got them home. That coupled with the fact that we are too cheap to buy a really nice one has caused me to gladly embrace my fake tree. Thankfully I found a tree stand to replace that one and we were back in business. Can I tell you that decorating the tree the second time is just not as exciting as the first time?
Our moment of dejavu was met from a similar event ten years ago. I was very pregnant with Hannah and Donnie had just had surgery, so he took his friend Mark with him to get our tree. The story has two versions. One is that Mark cut the trunk crooked and had to trim it off straight. The other is that Donnie didn't want to pay for a taller tree and got Mark to cut it as close as possible to fall under the 6 foot mark. I'll let you decide which of those you believe, I have my own opinions (Did I mention we're cheap?) At any rate, the tree didn't have enough trunk to fit in the stand so we ended up wedging it in. Every so often I would look at the tree and notice it was leaning a little more than before. One night I was asleep in the recliner when I heard it. I didn't want to open my eyes, because I knew what it was. Donnie, on the other hand, only heard a loud bang from the bedroom and had no idea what had happened. I still snicker at my wild eyed honey flying into the living room at 3 am. We hoisted that one back up as well, but another tree stand would not help it, so we tied it to the curtain rod for the remainder of the holiday season.
How many people do you really know who've had a tree fall over ... twice?
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