2016 Christmas Tree

Since we ended up not going to the farm, we were able to get our Christmas tree on Black Friday this year. We went to Home Depot first, but they didn’t have any trees tall enough. Then we went to Lowes, where we saw Aunt E, Uncle Jeff, Kate, and Luke walking out after having purchased the first tree they looked at. We hoped that was a good sign and went in to see if we could find ours.

The boys made themselves at home in their “tree fort” and collected broken branches and discarded string while Kenny and I looked for a tree that would suffice. Nola and Nopsi showed up not long after we did looking for their two trees. It was a family tree shopping party!

We found a few potentials before finally settling on one. It was really tall, not quite as fat as usual, and shaped a little wonky, but I decided I liked it.

Kenny got our tree set up in the house the next day and put lights on it Sunday morning. We spent most of Sunday focusing on the rest of the house, though. I got the inside done while Kenny worked on putting up the outside lights and wreaths. He set up the bouncy house for the boys in the front yard, and they had a great day playing and bouncing.

We went to Nola and Nopsi’s for Sunday dinner, so we didn’t get a chance to decorate our tree until Monday evening. I was pleasantly surprised that the boys wanted to help as much as they did; they especially loved picking out ornaments to put on their little {fake} tree. Kenny also added a small string of colored lights to their tree, which they also loved.

I ended up going to bed early that night, but Kenny stayed up and finished hanging all of our ornaments on the big tree. Then, half an hour after he got into bed, it all came crashing down.

Shockingly, I heard nothing and slept through it all. I discovered the tree leaning up against the wall the next morning, along with a pile of broken ornaments on my kitchen counter and a trash can full of tree needles and shattered glass. I was devastated. I didn’t even get a picture of the tree before it fell since it wasn’t quite done before I went to bed.

Kenny was up for almost three hours in the wee hours of the morning cleaning up. We lost a lot of ornaments that had such good memories for us, including a few Baby’s First Christmas ornaments. Some are fixable but a lot are not. (However, I just realized that Kenny has been slowly fixing the repairable ones over the past week and hanging them back on the tree. I think I’ll keep him.)

Kenny felt horribly and ended up staying home from work on Tuesday to get the tree into a new stand and put completely back together. He anchored it to the walls this time and hopefully it will remain standing until we take it down in January. So far, so good, but I admit I’m still a little nervous when I walk inside the house after being gone for awhile!

The tree itself still seems to be in fairly good shape, so I’m just crossing my fingers it lasts for another month. And stays upright. I can’t take it if anything else breaks.

‘Tis the season, y’all.