Our tradition is to decorate our Christmas tree the Monday after Thanksgiving for Family Home Evening. The pictures are from that event. The kids are getting quicker in their old age and really enjoyed doing it. Christmas is great with kids around! They just make everything so exciting.
So a few days later, I asked Greg to move the tree for me a little bit, which he quickly and easily did. The next day I wanted it moved a little bit more. I thought it looked easy enough, so Ben and Liz and I made the attempt. Well, I guess I am not as good as Greg, because the Christmas tree fell right over! It fell right on the linoleum where some of the ornaments proceeded to break into tiny little pieces. This elicited a cry from Ben and a scream from Liz. Thank heavens neither of them were under the tree when it fell. I hefted it up and then thought, while still holding it, now what am I going to do? I have a three year old and a two year old to help me stabilize this tree. I sent the two year old up to the loft to watch out of the way of the glass since he already had tried to walk through it a few times. The three year old was actually quite helpful. She held the tree up while I went under and readjusted the stand. It seemed a little crooked, but stable enough. I then tried to put the star back up on top. Bad idea. I managed to knock the tree over again! It fell one more time as I was trying to stablize it again (Greg said after having it fall three times he would have just left it on the ground). Finally I got it up in the stand again, but it didn't seem very safe. I sent Lizzy to fetch some very heavy weights (for her). They were 10 lbs. each. She carried them up one at a time from the basement. She was amazing! All the while I am holding the tree and trying to screw in the screws as tight as I can. The poor tree trunk now had several gouges in it. I had to put the 2 weights on the back of the tree stand to hold it down and a folded up piece of paper under one of the other legs, but it finally stayed up! As you can imagine this took quite a little while. Then I still had to clean up the glass and vacuum. Lizzy did awesome and Ben whimpered and watched, but stayed out of the way. Greg came home and took one look at the tree and said, "Oh my." After the kids went to bed we tried to fix things up a bit. Unfortunately the tree stand must have gotten bent in the falls, so despite our efforts the stand is still stabilized by the two weights and a piece of paper. Pretty crazy huh? By the way, we get real trees every year, This year it is between 6 and 7 feet tall, so it is pretty heavy. Merry Christmas. Moral of the story: Ask your husband to move the tree if it's not in just the right spot!
6 comments:
Oh man, that's a funny story. I think Lizzie should definitely get extra presents for her efforts. This year we are borrowing a fake tree and it's just not quite the same as a real one, so we may be switching back next year.
Unfortunately, Todd and I have never had a real tree. I can't really ever remember having one (maybe once in my life 25 years ago or something). I'd definitely like to do that someday.
Amazing that you all survived the tree incident. I'm sure you'll have a good laugh about it in the years to come. I would have tried to do the same thing because Todd absolutely hates moving things once they are in place. Way to persevere!
That was a funny story. I'm glad you all survived. My family ALWAYS did real trees and I loved it! We did one last year but decided not to this year because we had a fake one stored for my brother in our garage... but I'm wishing we had a real one now!
You made my day! I have this picture of you and Lizzy wrestling that tree. Too bad that you couldn't have also taken pictures. We went to a fake tree when we paid $70 for one that died before Christmas. I loved the days when we went to Fillmore and cut down our own trees.
That's hilarious! We always get real trees, but I don't think we'll be getting a tree this year. We just won't be home enough!
That is a great story. I can see myself doing something like that. I am glad that no one was hurt. The things we do sometimes! Yes I do get a lot of use out of my snowpants (a little to much I think) We do get a lot of snow and cold weather. They say that around here we get 9 Months of winter and 3 months of visitors. It is true. We will miss the dog a lot. We hope to get another one sometime in the future.
Catherine
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