The Story of the Tree

Now that Christmas is done, I guess I should blog about the tree.

It didn't start off well. And it didn't go well in the middle. But the end was fine!

It all started off at the tree lot. I did not think that I was picky about Christmas trees. . .until this year. Early this fall we went to a tree farm to pick out a tree. Unfortunately, the farm only grew Blue Spruce trees, and I decided that I did not like Blue Spruce trees. Who knew that they were so . . so . . blue!

We went to a lot after Thanksgiving, and it was FREEZING! I had Garry go screen out some options, and I was supposed to make the final decision. We decided pretty quickly that one tree was "fine" -- did I mention we were freezing?

It was not until later that I discovered I made a horrible mistake. After Garry was able to pick the tree up and get it into the house by himself (something he could not do last year) we discovered that it was smaller than last year's tree. The girls noticed it, too. Instead of getting bigger and better, as was our tradition, it was smaller. And skinnier. I think that the girls were a little disappointed. I know Garry was.

Decorating the Christmas tree is always a little chore. I know I should delete chore and insert joy. . .but, no, it's a chore. Garry is allergic to Christmas trees. When he gets in there and starts wrapping the lights in and out of the strands, he gets sick. For this reason, it can take a really long time to decorate the tree. The light process can take awhile and after that we still have all of the ornaments.

This year we tried to push through it, and Garry got the lights up in one night. A Christmas miracle! But then disaster struck. Half of the lights on the tree went out! Garry hates, hates, hates putting up lights to begin with and now we had to figure out what was wrong?? It did not look good.

After much searching and not a little sap, we found the strand that we thought was the problem. We removed it, and I inserted a new strand the next day. But then it happened again! And we noticed that one strand in particular was getting really hot. Christmas tree fire for Christmas, anyone? I took that strand off and put in a new one. Due to the light debacle, we still did not have any ornaments up.

For one reason or another, we kept blowing fuses. We decorated the tree, and Garry would just replace the fuse. We finally got down to just a few fuses and the days before Christmas we kept the lights off.

I am ready to throw in the towel and just get a nice, prelit fake tree. But Garry is not very convinced. Maybe we'll just have one more year with one more great big tree and try to space out the lights a little better so we are not blowing fuses ;)