O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
How are thy leaves so verdant!
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure doth thou bring me!
For every year the Christmas tree
Brings to us all both joy and glee.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure doth thou bring me!
I am NOT singing the nice happy tune O Christmas Tree, sung to honor the lovely Christmas tree. I'm saying it more groan-like, with a nice big heavy sigh! The "Stevens sigh", if you will.
"Much pleasure doth thou bring me!" "Joy and glee." Give me a break!!!!!!! It is verdant though. Yes, it is definitely green.
The Christmas tree getting process started out wonderful! My friend Stephanie was visiting from Oklahoma so she came with us to good old Lowe's!
We chose a tree in about 2 minutes. I handed Stephanie the camera and asked her to take a picture of us with our tree. Somewhere between wiping snot off of Talon's face and getting Ben to look at the camera, Talon got loose. Jon ran off to get him while I stood in front of our lovely tree with Simon and Ben. 
After Jon grabbed Talon he lifts this other tree up and says "Hey, what about this one?!" Stephanie and I were both like, "Ooohh, I love that one. That one is much better! It's such a nice shade of green!" So off we go to get our picture taken with the new tree. 
As Jon's tying the tree onto the van I say to Stephanie, "This is usually one of our biggest fights of the year!" She says, "It's my presence!" I said, "You're coming every year from now on!" Okay, it's all tied on and we head out for dinner. We ended up at Red Robin and had great food. The kids were really good too. And the raspberry limeade was awesome!!!
So we head home and Jon goes to get the tree ready for the stand. We have this stand that has a big spike in the bottom of it. Then when you choose your tree at the tree farm, they drill a hole in the bottom of it for you. You come home and slide it on and it's done! We used to get our tree at the tree farm like my sister and her family but decided that Lowe's is now our place of choice - much closer, much easier and less time and money. Anyway, Jon decided that he would make the hole a little smaller and hammer the stand on so it wouldn't wobble. The second the tree was up we all knew that it was completely crooked. Not the stand. The tree. Then I realized that he forgot to put the water bucket thingy on before he hammered the stand into our tree. So he hammered the stand out, put the bucket on and re-hammered it onto our tree. But he accidentally put the hammer through the plastic water bucket. Oh fabulous! He started to take the stand off and accidentally hit the wall with the hammer. At this point, Jon is about to lose it! He picks up the whole thing and carries it to the porch where he is successful at removing the now broken tree stand.
He quietly heads to Target to get a new stand. Gets the new one installed properly, adds water and it begins to drip all over the place. As he was screwing the tree into the stand it cracked up the whole side. I head to Target to get a new, bigger one. (Maybe that's the problem...who knows?!!) I get home and start getting the new stand ready and Jon walks into the room and sees I'm about to start crying. He comes to give me a hug and offer me some nice tea. He puts on the Christmas music and we sip our tea. Ahh, better! Back to the pain in my side. Er, I mean tree. This time I go under it to screw the huge screws in. I come out and we let go and....
Tah-Dah!!!!!!!!!! It's straight (almost) and it looks so good! I think the Lord fixed the top of our tree somehow while I was at Target or something because that thing was crooked!!! And I am loving my new star. Since we got married nearly 8 years ago we've had the same grapevine star, which I still like, but I happened upon this one at OTP and had to have it!
I'm not even going to post about the ornament process. I won't put anyone through that whole ordeal. But here are a few pictures that look like everyone is happy and enjoying themselves. Let's just say for the record, they were not. Neither was I. I actually had to leave the house at one point. Oh What Fun!!!
But the bottom line is...the tree is up and relatively straight. We're ready to start the Christmas season...again!
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6 comments:
The last time we did a real Christmas tree was Olivia's first Christmas. We went to Indy for a week and when we got home we discovered the biggest mess - our tree had fallen over! We had the same stand you describe with the poky thing. The tree didn't come off of the poky thing, the entire thing tipped over, including the water bucket. The water had soaked through the carpet and there was sap all over the place - if that wasn't bad enough, we had 2 cats at the time and they thought they had just landed at toys'r'us for cats - almost every ornament was off of the tree and scattered throughout the house - they obvioulsy had a very good time playing with them.
Wow! Sounds like my time this year! The ornament process was a huge pain! I left out most of the details in my post, but I would've rather of done it myself! Hopefully my kids remember the fun stuff, and not their mommy yelling at them! :) Ahhhh, what fond memories!
Yay! So happy it's almost straight! Maybe next year we need someone else to go with. I'll come along to help pick out a tree without fights and then someone else can come along to make sure that we get a straight tree...lol :-)
ps...i got my blog password :) so help me figure out how to make it look cool!
I love the before and after photo with tree 1 and tree 2. The look and your face in the pics says it all!! My husband always says that it wouldn't be christmas without something going wrong (or usually a big argument).
I do believe that's your most beautiful tree yet!! You should just take the time .. after the kids are asleep .. and stare at it and really enjoy it. After all, it really is so verdant and all (hehe) Love you, Mellie.
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