When A tree falls in the Forest.........

You know the rest of that one, right? The whole does it make a noise thing? Personally, I believe that of course it does.

I can also state with 100% certainty that when a tree falls in your living room, it makes a sound also. When it falls twice in your living room, it makes even more noise, and actual curse words too.

Friday we decided to get our Christmas tree. We had grand aspirations ~ we set off to go to the cut your own Christmas tree farm about 40 minutes from our house. Visions of kids prancing around a field of happy trees and picking one out to bring home danced in our heads. Only thing is, Julia can't prance, she can't even walk. And my back was hurting terribly for some unknown reason, which meant that I couldn't carry her in the sling. And Luke has no idea what a Christmas tree even is. And with the whole "fun" ride out to the fields on a wagon/tractor thing thing we couldn't bring the stroller. So.

About 5 minutes into our ride to the farm we passed a tree lot ~ you know the sort that pops up on every corner this time of year selling cut trees? Nate and I both turned to one another at the exact same moment and said "What the heck are we doing?". We turned the car around and let Luke prance around the cut tree laden lot and happily picked out a tree. We can save the whole "cut your own" experience till later. We are getting so practical these days with two young kids. Most days are about survival, not hallmark postcard moments and sugar plum fairies.

That evening Nate put up the tree while I picked up pizza. We got the kids to bed and then proceeded to wrap the tree liberally with lights, and put on the ornaments. I admit that I am a terribly sentimental and sappy person ~ almost every ornament that we have has a story behind it, and the simple act of pulling them out of the boxes usually makes me teary at one point or another. Especially the special, hand painted ones that were made for us by my sister, or the ones that we handpicked for our kids, or the ones from the year that we got married, or that we made ourselves as young children. You get the idea.

We finished. I proudly took a pic or two of our lovely tree (above) while Nate carried popcorn and water's up to our bedroom. We were exhausted. I went to unplug the tree, and it fell over. Crashed over. I screamed. It's a big, 8.5 foot tree. Water, needles, and ornaments went splashing and shattering all over our carpet. Nate came running downstairs sure that I was being attacked by a person, never suspecting that it might be a tree that attacked me. I started crying, and explaining how I didn't do anything, I didn't knock it over or anything, it just fell. I admit, the fact that I was unplugging it did seem to have to have had something to do with it.........but I swear I didn't knock into it or anything that would warrant it falling over. I don't think that Nate entirely believed me (I admit, it didn't look good ~ circumstantial evidence would certainly seem to indicate that I did do something terribly wrong) but Nate was kind, and didn't get angry, or bother assigning blame, and we simply got to work. It was probably a good 45 minutes of cleaning up, and me crying as I found broken ornaments, and getting up the water, and needles, and glass, and the like. We passed out in bed much too late, and were up again much too early the next morning.

Nate was gone playing golf most of the day yesterday, so we decided to wait and address the tree issue until last night. Sure that the problem was the old, small-ish tree stand that we had Nate went and bought a new one. Worried about some of the large, low branches, Nate cut them off. We had to pick the tree up (laden with lights and ornaments) and get it out of the first stand and into the second. Fun work, really fun. Stressful and pokey branches and sloshing water and heavy lifting sort of fun, you know?

We got it done. We noticed that the tree was leaning some, but blamed that on the much accursed stump. We rehung the 30 or so ornaments that had fallen off in the first crash. We vacuumed yet AGAIN. We sighed. We went to bed, again, exhausted. At some point, not long after we had fallen asleep, Nate heard a noise. Nate left the bedroom. I heard lots of cursing and shouting. I jumped up out of bed and started running down the steps ~ Nate hovered over the tree, which was again laying on the floor ~ shouting "don't even come in here!" to me as though he stood over a dead body and was trying to protect me from seeing it. A couple of my most precious ornaments were shattered. I have to tell you ~ at that point I had visions of gasoline and bonfires and crazed tired parents dancing around the blazing tree in some sort of foaming at the mouth insane victory dance. The tree felt like the enemy. I mean, WHO does that happen to? WHO can't get a freaking Christmas tree to stand up?

Us. That's who. Bah freaking humbug, you accursed Christmas Tree.