Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

We were able to enjoy having Christmas in our own house this year for the very first time. My mother-in-law, Rita, and her partner Tricia came to celebrate with us for a week. A lot happened here during that week so I'll start you out with the story of our Christmas tree.


About a week before Christmas we decided to get a real tree. We went to about five different places looking for a tree stand before we found a place that had one. We got our tree and brought it home to set it up, Damien decided the tree stand needed to be hammered onto the tree so the metal prongs would be secure in the tree trunk. While hammering it on, the tree stand cracked in three different places. We didn't know this until we filled the stand with water and it began to leak!

Damien dragged the tree outside and tried super gluing the cracks. The glue wouldn't dry because it was too cold out so he had to drag it back in the house. While the glue was drying some of it managed to leak onto our hardwood floors! (We're still picking it off.) Once dry, we put a small amount of water in it to see if the glue would hold and we didn't see any water leaking out! We put a towel under the stand just to be on the safe side, filled the stand with water, and set the tree up with gifts underneath its branches.

Next we had to get decorations for the tree. I drove around to about seven different places looking for white lights for the tree and had to settle with some dim LED lights because every single place was sold out of the regular white lights. Who knew Atlanta would be sold out of everything you need to have a real tree the week before Christmas? We did finally get the tree decorated though!

On Christmas eve, Damien wanted everyone to open one gift. He started digging through the gifts to find the one he wanted to open and discovered all the packages were wet. So much for the superglue holding. The towel under the tree was soaking wet and many of the gifts were damp. We had to move all the packages out away from the tree to dry overnight. The gifts were still damp in the morning but nothing was ruined!


Two days after Christmas Damien decided he'd had enough of the Christmas tree and coerced me into helping him take the decorations off. He dragged the tree out the door and threw it off the front porch. It's still lying in our front yard with the stand still on. I'm hoping one of these days it will be removed.