iPhone Image 1BD965Our goal for the Christmas tree is to have it stand up straight, be beautiful and look festive. Its goal is to fall over dead.

The first time we had a tree fall over it happened in the middle of the night. The good news is it fell over on the night of Christmas Day, so we’d already had the gift opening on Christmas morning. The bad news is that it fell onto a hardwood floor. We lost many fragile, sentimentally valuable ornaments. The scary news is that it keeled over in the middle of the night, breaking said ornaments, and no one heard a thing. We woke up the next day to find it lying on its side in the midst of brightly colored, shattered glass.

We thought that was an isolated happening. But the next tree that fell over did so before Christmas Day. Luckily, we’d placed this tree on a carpet so the ornament damage was minimal.

The third tree fell over last night, minutes after we finished decorating it. We were all sitting there enjoying it. It really is a beautiful tree. When, slowly and majestically, it fell to the ground. We had a brand new tree stand. A big one. It stuck with the tree all right. And all the water that had been in the stand spilled onto the carpet.  Luckily, we keep a big plastic tarp under the tree but it did spill onto the red felt tree skirt that I keep on top of the plastic. So dh pulled the tree up and I held it while hollering for someone to get towels to mop up the water before the red felt stained everything.

The first comment was from my husband. “At least we’re here to deal with it,” he said. “That was good luck.”

“Nothing says luck like the Christmas tree falling over,” said kid #2.

Kid #3 retreated to the corner to be upset. Kid #2 raced out of the room toward the stairs. Kid #1, bless her, went for towels to wipe up the mess. When #2 returned, I said, “Where did you go?”

“I had to post an update on Facebook,” she answered. What, it’s not real until it’s on Facebook?

Youngest dd had been taking pictures of the tree trimming for her photography class. After the tree was upright again, one of the kids said, “You should have taken a picture of the tree on the floor.”

“That’s all right,” she responded. “I’ll get it next time.”

Well, we had a few broken lights and ornaments, but it wasn’t too bad. We had some laughs.

So then dh wired it to the wall (which he’d said he would do earlier and has done before).

It’s still a beautiful tree. Merry Christmas to all.

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